


Dear Darkness

by CatsOnMars



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean POV, Dubious Consent, First Time, Flashbacks, Holy baggage batman, M/M, Pre-Canon, Rough Sex, Sam POV, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 06, Soulless Sam Winchester, Soulmates, Stanford Era, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-18
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-29 18:39:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 47,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsOnMars/pseuds/CatsOnMars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With a little support from Cas that comes in a strange form, Sam may be able to keep his memories of the cage suppressed. But everything his soulless self lived through are memories he's now stuck with, including some things Dean wasn't prepared for him to have to find out about. (Post-6.11 fic, now obviously rendered entirely AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. part 1/6

**Author's Note:**

> This is generally just a post-6.11 fic (that jumps back into pre-series/other times here and there), but it also goes just a little AU even with canon up to that point with some details regarding Dean/Robo-Sam that contradict recent canon...which I'm sure won't be nearly as confusing as it might sound when it comes up in the fic. Heh.

>   
>    
> __  
> 
> 
>   
> _Darkness I've been your friend for many years  
>  While everyone else was having good luck  
> Dear darkness, now it's your time to pay  
> With all the things you took from us  
> Now it's your time to look after us_   
> **pj harvey - "dear darkness"**   
>    
> 

 

Two guys walk into a motel.

If this sounds like the beginning of a joke, it's one that stopped being funny a long time ago, if it ever was.

They're fit and tough-looking, tall, one of them intimidatingly so but with a certain earnestness in the features of his face that helps to soften his overall appearance. They're dressed practically, multiple layers of clothes adding to the impression of a thick and impenetrable shell they each seem to have built up on their outsides.

But they're not guarded and impenetrable to each other, that's clear. Maybe there's only so much you can tell about people on sight, but these two seem to share something that's difficult to quite finger yet undeniable, like they walk around in some invisible bubble of their own separate world. They don't exactly look alike in many ways at all, but there's still so much about them that's the same that it's easy to tell they know each other profoundly well.

Someone is always there at the office desk who takes all of this in, whether with conscious curiosity or just naturally passing observations in the back of their mind, and they take down a name from one of them that sounds fake rolling off his tongue somehow and then ask the usual questions.

This has happened a hundred times. "Two queens," one answers. And of course there isn't always some kind of crack in response like "Whatever you say" or " _Right_..." Like _Uh huh, sure you're brothers._ It isn't always like that, but there's often something Dean and Sam can see in a stranger's eyes in these various kinds of moments of first meeting, like the other senses some kind of discordance between what they're hearing from the two of them and what they're seeing. It isn't necessarily that they don't believe they're brothers or professional partners or whatever. They just seem to know somehow that there's more to it than that, something that can't be explained in so few words or understood just by watching them together.

There's more to the story.

 

As Dean lies wide awake on Bobby's floor in the dark, his eyes fixed on the heavily sleeping form of his brother on the couch close by as if he still can't quite believe he's finally here again, it's not lost on him how utterly cliché this is. Not to mention totally saccharine. Watching him sleep. Come _on._

Nonetheless it's one of the most reassuring sights he's ever seen. It's the first time he's seen it again since he watched him pitch himself straight into Hell over a year ago, after all.

The peaceful way he looks now may not be the best indication of his present condition. Even without remembering all the time he was dead, so far the experience of being returned to his physical body after spending well over a century downstairs has proven to be an incredibly messy and disorienting ordeal for him, and he seems to have a lot of adjusting to do before he can totally or even mostly regain what he was before.

But right now Sam is breathing steadily and staying completely still, definitely deep in sleep without disturbance. He's sleeping like _Sam._ Like a generally functional human being who lives and feels.

This is his fucked-up, mutilated, ugly, beautiful brother. Soon enough he'll have to deal with all that he is now and what it could mean, all the damage under the surface threatening to break through, but right now it's enough that he's simply alive again. The rest he can deal with later.

 

Dean had a rip in his T-shirt. It was a hole at the seam of one sleeve that kept getting bigger every time this shirt went through the wash, and it had torn open a little more after a nasty altercation with a Pagan god in Oklahoma a couple months ago.

Sam who was not Sam, who had learned by then there was no point in them talking more than was needed, stood beside him in silence leaning back against the bumper while he loaded all their supplies back into the trunk. Dean thought he caught him staring to the side at him, not at his face but down at the part of his shirt that was ripped open and the skin and muscle of his shoulder exposed there.

Then the moment Dean had just turned his head, he shifted his eyes up and met his gaze. And for just a second as Sam's eyes burned into his steadily and shamelessly, the corner of his mouth twitched up in a self-satisfied smirk. As if just to fuck with him.

Sam then turned to walk around to the passenger seat. "You feel like eating?" he asked casually, pouring ice over the thick and smothering silence.

Dean slammed the trunk shut, feeling something cold and foreign and dirty squirming inside his stomach.

 

Sam doesn't dream about the cage.

He doesn't dream about the past year that he wasn't himself, the places he saw, the things he killed, the women and men he fucked without knowing their names, the sad movies on TV after midnight that bored him, the long nights spared of nightmares because he never slept.

He doesn't dream about Jess dying, or about horrific deaths of strangers yet to happen, or about Dean dying. He doesn't dream about the devil inside him making him kill Cas then Bobby then Dean, slowly, feeling his bones break and crumble.

He dreams about the little apartment with tired blue wallpaper where he hated living for a couple months when he was sixteen. It's a stupid and mundane dream involving nothing much that he'll remember when he wakes up except that he and Dean are grown, yet the whole nonsense scenario takes place there, strangely, where they lived for just a little while so long ago. Brown door with a peephole like the eye of John or God watching from outside even with the blinds shut and the whole room dim, wheat colored carpet, math equations all over the blue walls, coffee can on top of the fridge that was their emergency bank. He hated it like all the other places, but quite often when he thinks of an apartment it's the vague layout and space of this one that he pictures. He has always remembered the time they were staying in that town well.

Equations written across the walls, except there weren't. It wasn't until that year that he finally lost the habit of writing the name Sammy on his school papers.

 

Around 10:30 Dean wakes up, sees that Sam is still sleeping, and follows the smell of bacon into the kitchen where Bobby is standing at the stove. He gives Sam a last glance before turning his back toward the sight of him to take a seat at the table and says, "He been up at all?"

"Nope," Bobby answers, also looking over at him a little uneasily.

He asks because Sam first went to sleep around 6:00 the night before. As soon as he'd had his soul restored, it already looked like he was just barely clinging to consciousness and then it seemed hard for him to even think about anything but sleep. He also said he felt really cold, which was a little weird. That was why they'd moved him out of the panic room and helped him upstairs where it would be a little warmer and he could lie down on the couch instead of using the bed in that dark dungeon that probably didn't bring back a lot of nice memories for him anyway. He'd been so drained of energy he needed both Dean and Bobby at his sides with his arms around their shoulders for support in order to make it up the stairway.

Dean can't help but keep replaying in his head the few things he said while awake, looking for good signs in the words that he's okay. The initial reunion was so short-lived it kind of feels like he's still waiting in suspense for the real thing.

As soon as Death finished up the reinstallation and blinked right out of sight, the following moments were sort of an excited blur with Dean rushing over to release Sam from the restraints while his blood started rushing in his ears like a deafening hurricane. When he held Sam up with an arm around his back because it looked like it was taking so much effort just for him to sit up, Sam looked all around the room and then up at him with a look of wild confusion, and then the first things to come out of his mouth were "Dean...Oh, woah...Dean, this feels... _really_ fucking weird..."

Then everything felt ridiculously light all the sudden. Dean could feel himself smiling like it seemed he hadn't smiled in a lifetime because this was _so_ Sam, all Sam, Dean could hear it in his voice in those brief first words and see it in his daunted eyes, that it was actually him here and whole again. Dean had to laugh a little just to let out some of his overwhelming relief.

Bobby had come to Sam's other side and he grabbed his shoulder, holding it securely and assuringly with his eyes getting a little misty. "Y'alright, boy?" he asked.

Sam smiled at him in a bittersweet way, his eyes bright and sad. It was incredible, seeing Sam look _sad_ again. "Yeah, I think, it's really...I think I'm just really tired. Oh God, _Bobby_...I'm _sorry_..."

"Hey, don't do that," Bobby said, giving his shoulder a firm shake. "It's okay."

"No. What I was going to do..." Shaking his head, Sam looked away from him miserably, and then back over at Dean. As he stared up at him, he seemed to keep thinking about something in more depth. Something he wasn't saying, _couldn't_ say, that was making him look even more horrified.

The dark realization slowly came over Dean then as he saw that slowly settling reaction in his eyes, and for an instant everything seemed to go silent and his blood ran cold. His hold on Sam weakened suddenly without him meaning to let go of him, and Sam had to reach back and hold himself up with a shaking arm.

"Wait...you tellin' me you remember _all_ that?" Bobby asked.

"Yeah," Sam said, and then his eyes widened a little with a whole new thought coming to him. _"Dammit._ Balthazar. He'll be coming back, I...There was a deal..."

"Balthazar? What're you...?" Bobby seemed to get it before he finished asking, and Dean could also put it together from what he read in his eyes.

"You— _He_ —made a deal with him?" Dean said, not even surprised by that part alone but still pretty unprepared for this. "Balthazar wanted you to kill _Bobby?"_

"No, that wasn't for him, it was for me," Sam explained with a shake of his head, his voice starting to come out very sluggish and heavy. "For _that_ me, I mean. The idea was to sort of...ruin me, with something bad enough to keep the soul out forever. Patricide."

As if Bobby almost getting killed hadn't been bad enough. Hearing how close he'd come to making it impossible for this to ever even happen made the others fall into a brief but very somber silence.

In that moment, Sam shrank in on himself slightly with a light spasm. Dean just acknowledged it as a disturbed shudder until he murmured, "Why'd it just get so cold down here?"

They only stayed silent with no answer to that, and when Sam glanced up at both of them, Dean knew the looks on both their faces showed they didn't see what he was talking about. He was pretty sure Sam _thought_ he meant that the room had just suddenly started feeling uncomfortable to him sometime in the last minute, or else he wouldn't have asked like that. But Dean had a feeling it was the replacement of his soul that had made the difference somehow, meaning his access to the memories from before that moment was so effortless that Sam was actually unconsciously confusing them with what he had been present for.

It should have been mostly a relief. If Sam had some sense of what the empty vessel of himself had experienced before that, strong enough that on a simple and instinctive level it felt like he had been in this room the whole time, then he must have felt almost like he'd never even been gone at all. That had to be easier to deal with than just feeling a great big gaping hole in his mind because all memories of the last century of his soul's existence had been sealed off from his awareness. But the thought of the alternate memories that had just been thrown on him in place of all that was only filling Dean with a growing sense of dread.

What had he brought his brother back into?

As if Bobby was having similar thoughts at the moment, he asked what Dean couldn't bring himself to. "How well do you actually remember everything?"

"Not everything...I don't know," Sam said vaguely, sounding confused. "But everything that recent is pretty much crystal-clear, like it was me. Even how it felt. I remember what it was like feeling nothing...God, it's not pretty..." He sighed, closing his eyes and rubbing at them as if that could wipe the images and memories out.

"Yeah, well, don't matter if it _feels_ like you were there," Bobby said. "I know you, and that _wasn't_ you. You got that?"

Sam didn't stop frowning. He just said heavily, "Guys, I'm _so tired,_ I think I'm going to..."

"Alright, buddy, we'll get you out of here and upstairs," Dean told him, lifting one of his arms around his shoulders. "Just try not to pass out for a few more minutes, okay?"

After they got him to the couch and Bobby went to grab some blankets, Dean couldn't seem to let himself linger too long and look at him too closely and he moved to leave his side right away. But Sam reached out and grabbed at the front of his shirt to keep him there, still sitting up even though his back kept swaying like his bones had turned to water. "Dean..."

He found his throat very dry when his voice came out. "Yeah."

Sam wasn't looking up at him; his eyes seemed to be gazing at something very far away, like he was lost for the moment swimming through so much fresh knowledge of the last year bombarding his consciousness. His hand stayed against Dean's chest gripping his shirt in a loose fist, as if he needed something physical in the present to hold onto while the confusing bits and pieces of the past year nearly overwhelmed him.

Out of the whole loud and unmanageable sea of details, one thing surfaced with a look of clarity in his eyes. "You kept your promise," he said softly.

Dean swallowed, his eyes sinking to look down at the floor with a lowering of his head. "I meant to, Sammy," he sighed. "I really was trying."

"Yeah..." When Dean glanced back at his face, Sam met his eyes with a weak, regretful kind of smile. "I guess after he came along he really screwed it all up, didn't he?"

Maybe it was just in his head, but he heard a much more terrible meaning in the words than anyone else could have caught in them. He had to close his eyes for a second with the seizing pang of guilt that came back to him along with that night, less than two weeks ago, when he left his phone in the car even though he never does that. His jaw was hurting like hell when he found it there later, a mocking pain with no meaningful resonance because the punch had been delivered with such steady and cool-headed calculation, hurting only distantly as if he was also separated from his soul. He'd stepped over the broken glass going back into the motel room and the crunching of it under his boots had made him think of ice and winter and the severe and empty taste of him that was still stuck in his throat like a cold silver blade, a tasteless taste.

Pushing it back out of mind, he took Sam's wrist and pulled his hand away from him so he could finally stand up straight, only lightly touching him as if Sam might break if he wasn't handled carefully. As he took Sam's shoulders and gave him a light push to the side to make him lie back across the couch, all he could do was say with a shaking, stubborn conviction, "You being alive now doesn't screw anything up."

As he barely still clung to awareness, Sam still had that sunken and regretful look on his face.

"Really, Sam, it's going to be okay," he said, kneeling on the floor in front of him. He was almost frantic in the way he kept fussing over him ridiculously, some rising desperation for assurance breaking through the filter between his thoughts and his mouth and making him unable to just shut up and let Sam sleep. "I know this isn't perfect, man, and it won't be easy, but it _is_ better like this."

Sam nodded, the movement so small Dean's attention barely caught it. His eyes were now only filled with something very soft and warm as he kept his heavy eyelids barely open and peered hazily at him.

"You got to trust me on that. Please, you have to understand, don't you? Just tell me I didn't completely fuck up here, Sam. Please say it's okay."

"Shut up, Dean," Sam whispered. He had finally closed his eyes but he still gave a very faint, teasing kind of smile. "It's okay. I know. This is...It's the right thing."

He didn't know how much he needed to hear it until Sam said the words. Right away it was as if something in him dropped loose and allowed his entire being to finally relax and put everything on hold for now. He stayed there until Bobby came back to toss him a couple blankets to put over him and then still didn't leave Sam's side for a while, sitting against the couch with his head tilted up and staring up at the devil's trap design on the ceiling but not seeing it at all.

Bobby stirs him out of his reflections when he sets a plate full of bacon and eggs in front of him. "Guess it makes sense he'd need to sleep like the dead for a spell," he says.

"Hm?" Dean looks up at him a little absently, still half-distracted.

"That body hasn't had any sleep for over a year," he clarifies with a shrug. "He's running on nothing."

"Yeah. Right."

It's already occurred to him, of course, and Bobby probably figures as much, but there's a need to fill the air with something besides the silent waiting. As if the fact that he's been out cold for over fifteen hours worries them nearly as much as what it will be like when he wakes up.

Bobby is bringing the salt to the table when Dean sees him freeze in his steps for a second, jumping in alarm at something, and then he just lets out a mildly irritated sigh.

Dean doesn't even need to look before saying dryly, "Well hey, Cas." He forks a strip of bacon into his mouth and then turns around to see Castiel standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the study, staring over at the couch where Sam lies sleeping as soundly as ever.

Gesturing toward his brother, he says, "Yeah, uh, big news..."

"He's asleep," Castiel observes.

"No shit."

"So you _did_ do it—but how?" he asks, turning to face Dean.

"I decided to try to strike a deal with Death and it was just our luck he has a personal interest in our work right now."

"The Horseman of Death? Hm...I suppose that makes sense." Castiel walks around the table and draws out a chair to take a seat at the same time that Bobby also sits down. For Cas this is very leisurely and human-like body language, giving Dean the idea this is much more like a social visit than his usual appearances. "How did you manage to seek an audience with someone like _him_ again?"

"You don't want to know," Dean answers. "How'd you guess something had happened?"

"Oh, _every_ angel could tell something had happened. I was in the middle of battle and everyone actually stopped fighting for an instant because we were so taken by surprise to feel that the cage had been broken into. We could tell the momentary breech wasn't nearly compromising enough to let Lucifer out, but the mere force of it was still monumental enough to be felt up in Heaven. I could only wonder what would be strong enough and willing to do that...What do you mean he has a personal interest in your work?"

"Somethin' about souls," Bobby says with a shrug. "He doesn't even know exactly what's going on, but he seems to believe he and Sam can get to the bottom of it if they keep digging up dirt on the Alphas and Purgatory. _Assuming_ that was what he meant."

"Yeah...It does sound like bad news," Dean says. "The way everyone seems to be collecting them like limited editions these days and talking like souls and Purgatory are the only promising investments right now. Even angels like your buddy Balthazar, who by the way, is a total _dick and a half_ who told Sam it was a good idea to try to kill Bobby."

"What?" Castiel blinks innocently. Then he thinks about it a moment and his expression sinks with that heavy disappointment he shows when talking about so many of his brothers these says. "You mean to scar his vessel? Believe me, it could have been worse..."

"Well, yeah, do you think?" Bobby says with thick sarcasm. "He could have _succeeded_."

Even though it really isn't funny, Dean's shoulders shake with a light, mostly contained laugh.

"I don't know if Balthazar informed him of the whole variety of choices, but I meant he could have gone after someone completely helpless," Castiel explains. "There would be a few options for wrongs evil enough to make that spell work. Besides patricide or matricide, there's always the killing of a child or the extreme physical violation of a blood relative or child."

Bobby and Dean both visibly cringe at that. "Okay, see your point," Dean says with his eyes opening wide for a second; he looks down at his breakfast that just stopped being the least bit appetizing with a brief and rejecting glance and sets his fork down. Then after turning all that over in his head he asks, "What about people who are so fucked up they've actually done things like that for no reason? Do they not have souls? Because that would explain a lot."

"No, committing such an act alone does not make one uninhabitable by a soul. It's merely an essential condition that must be met before or during the performing of the spell. Perhaps it can be said that someone needs to have a soul in order to be truly evil just as they need it to be good."

Dean steals a brief look over at Sam in the next room and then leans back in his chair, crossing his arms as he thinks. "I don't know...Lots of days I might still take a demon over the prick he was," he says.

Bobby looks at him doubtfully.

He shrugs. "Demons _are_ souls, aren't they? Sort of. Of course I'd waste every last one of them if it were possible, but at least they're on a side and can be loyal in their way. A lot of them actually care and find some kind of meaning in being evil sons of bitches, I guess. So I've at least got a chance of understanding and predicting _them."_

"That's the thing about souls," Castiel says, starting to look somewhat deep in thought. "In their nature, they are very _constant._ They're unbelievably strong and obstinate things, with a certain power and protection that is in some ways stronger than anything; it is the reason no one's soul can even be touched without them first willingly making some concession to give it up. And even once taken and damned, it takes quite a lot and quite a long time in Hell to change a soul and twist it into something new." Some new train of thought makes him look upwards for a moment before he goes on sounding strangely wistful. "With the absence of a power in Heaven, many of my brothers have so easily accepted that there must not be any design or ultimate truth to follow anymore. But even with God long gone and no one giving orders, there is still in each human soul an undeniable and unbendable nature. It's a blueprint by God that is unquestionable in its design, much more absolute than prophecy. It may be one of the only things certain and unchanging anymore, in a time of complete disorder in Heaven..."

After hanging on through at least most of that, Dean blinks with interest. "Is that why they're supposed to be so valuable?" he asks. "You think they might hold some kind of power with a practical use because they can take a lot of beatings without losing integrity or whatever?"

"No. Well, yes, possibly. I don't know..." Castiel shakes his head, looking weary. "But it's all the more reason you _should_ probably get to the bottom of this soon, if the state of many souls is being threatened by Balthazar and others taking an unusual interest in them now. Demons making deals for souls is one thing, but this is getting completely outside the natural order of things. I'm sure Death doesn't even need to have a concept of anything in the universe being sacred to recognize the carelessness of agitating that order."

Dean lifts his brow in easy agreement. "Yeah, he only gave me a one-day mandatory course in being responsible with these things. Poor guy doesn't even have the option of pulling the stick from his ass for one second without something catastrophic coming out."

Cas furrows his brow for a second as he fails to make sense of that imagery, but as usual he doesn't bother asking. An instant later one of Bobby's phones starts ringing and he curses under his breath, getting up to go grab it. As the others can hear him playing FBI agent, they both get up from the table and wordlessly gravitate toward the next room where Sam still hasn't moved an inch.

"Has he been awake at all?" Castiel asks, suddenly seeming to speak a lot more carefully. "Was he...?"

Dean only now remembers what significant detail he hasn't yet gotten to explaining. "Yeah, he's fine," he says, getting an understandably doubtful look from Cas. "More or less, I mean, as far as we could tell. Death said he could put up a kind of wall in his mind so he wouldn't remember."

He looks vaguely surprised, but much less apprehensive than before. "Is that possible?"

Dean crosses his arms again, eyes shifting down to the floor for a second. "It's a gamble," he admits gravely. "He couldn't promise that it'll be completely reliable. Chances are it should give him a lot of time even if it doesn't work forever, which is better than nothing, but...I guess he needs to be really careful. You know, to let it be, even though he's going to feel that there's that wall in there and it might be really tempting to try to poke at it."

Castiel gives an intensely pondering look over in Sam's direction, staying silent for the moment.

"Uh...Cas?" Dean asks a little uneasily, something bothering him. "What you were saying about how souls can't just change easily..."

"Yes?"

"Well, I know...He could be fine, and he could survive like this a long time, but I know underneath everything he's always going to be a complete mess. Everything he went through downstairs is always going to be a part of him that can't just be fixed, right?"

"I'm afraid so. If this was the most even someone as powerful as Death could do..."

"Right, but does that mean...?" He struggles to find a way to word the question, not wanting to address what he's thinking very directly, but he can only be so vague about getting at it. "What about when Sam dies? For good this time, whenever that is. Does that mean he'll remember everything then, and he'll still be...?"

Something understanding and almost gentle comes into Castiel's features as he sees what Dean is trying to ask. "No, that's different," he tells him certainly. "I mean yes, he _will_ remember everything after that, but in Heaven...When he is finished and resting there instead of where he was before, it won't matter. He will know it's over and nothing can ever hurt him again. If anything, the memory of suffering can only make it an all the more welcome solace to reach paradise."

Dean swallows, a little overwhelmed by how much it actually means to hear it. "He'll be happy."

"Yes," Castiel says, his eyes acknowledging the deeper meaning of this conversation.

He gives a quick glance toward Bobby in the kitchen, who has hung up the phone and is now writing something down. Nodding, he forces out, "It's just...You were trying to talk me out of this. You didn't seem to think trying to get him out of there had any chance of paying off at all..."

Frowning in his own way that's all in his eyes, Castiel looks almost like he's had some kind of cover blown. "I knew it could be for the better in the end, looking at the big picture, and of course I understood the need to do something about the person Sam had become. But this was still _your brother,_ and I had doubts that you were looking at it in such a realistic way and able to seriously consider the most horrific possibilities you faced by doing what you meant to do for him. I feared you couldn't possibly be prepared for that, especially the kind of choice you could be left with if he was suffering too much, and...I want _you_ to survive, too."

As Dean chews on that uneasily, he must look like he isn't entirely understanding him or just doesn't _want_ to see his whole point, because Castiel gives a quiet, reluctant-sounding sigh and amends more bluntly, "All I was certain of was that I didn't want you both to be dead in a year or two because things were difficult but manageable before and then you had to take this risk and the consequences were unbearable. As long as you're hunting, at least, you and your brother need each other. You've proven as much time and time again. You would keep going, perhaps, but after having to lose him _again,_ you'd practically be useless. I don't need a thorough understanding of humanity to know that. Practically everything evil out there that hates you knows it, and now that you're active in their world again you would be an easy, wounded and careless target."

Dean innerly flinches at hearing it so openly discussed. "I just barely stopped him from cutting Bobby's throat," he points out. "You call _that_ manageable?"

"That was later," he says, only conciliatory now. "I didn't know it would get that out of control."

"Yeah...neither did I," Dean admits.

"I really should have seen it, though."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he did sort of threaten to kill me at one point..." At Dean's raised eyebrow he adds, "I know. The idea was so laughable I didn't take it all that seriously."

Dean smiles in amusement, shaking his head. "So...you wouldn't be offering to _help_ us look into this business with the souls, would you?"

It is easy to see Castiel's somewhat reluctant defeat in the moment he hesitates. "I don't know, are you trying to convince me it's in my interests to help? It would be quite a change from when you simply try to tell me what you need from me."

"Oh no, I'm not telling you to do anything," he says lightly. "I'm not even _asking._ I wouldn't. You're a very important angel with very important things to do instead of wasting your time down here with us, I get it."

Castiel actually rolls his eyes. "I'll see what I can find out when I have the chance. And first..." His brow creases in thought for a second. "I'm going to look into something else. For Sam."

That makes Dean perk up in surprise. Bobby, who has just come to lean against the doorway and caught the recent bits of their conversation, says, "For _Sam?_ Like what?"

"There may be something I can do," Castiel answers vaguely. "If it will work for him. I'll be back soon."

And just like that, the spot where he was standing is empty. As he and Bobby exchange looks, Dean just shrugs cluelessly.

 

It was 1999, a cool and rustling night in early autumn, back when they'd been staying in a tiny craphole of an apartment in Indiana for a while. Their dad was supposed to be gone until well past midnight and Sam was spending most of his time bent over some books in preparation for an upcoming test even though it was a Friday night. Dean watched something intolerably predictable on TV until Sam finally took a break and emerged from the bedroom, itching to go out and stretch his legs for a while. So they took a few bucks from the coffee can their dad always kept some extra cash in on top of the fridge and walked to the store down the street to get something cold and carbonated to drink, passing a house with brightly lit-up windows and tons of cars outside where it looked like a bunch of kids were having a party. When they came by it again on their way back to the apartment, Dean's eyes were drawn transfixedly to all the cute girls they could now see hanging out on the porch.

Light and music were pouring out of the storm door, the front entrance left open. They decided to crash the party. "I guess, just for a while," Sam said, mostly indifferent, because they hadn't left a note or anything in case John got back a little early but the very idea of going back to that quiet and empty void of an apartment was unbearably boring right now.

They introduced themselves to any random people who took notice of them as if they actually belonged there and then nobody suspected otherwise. There was a table full of plastic cups with some kind of red mixed drink. After Dean picked one up and handed another to him, Sam stared down into it with uncertainty.

"Didn't Bruce always say not to drink anything that wasn't mixed in front of you?" he said with a slightly raised eyebrow, referring to the health teacher from one of their past schools who they used to trade ridiculous stories about and affectionately make fun of.

Dean just laughed, and his words were lightly teasing. "Yeah, whatever. You're with me, you're safe."

Then Dean was the one who ended up needing a little bit of looking after. After a while Sam had to pull him away from a girl he was sloppily chatting up and take his sixth cup out of his hand because he was clearly starting to lose track of time and Sam was still just sober enough to acknowledge that he really didn't need to drink any more.

They were making their way through a dark hallway, stepping over a group of people sitting on the floor and passing a joint around, when a girl turning from a doorway walked right into Dean and sloshed half of her drink onto his shirt. Laughing as Dean just stood there rolling his eyes afterwards, Sam took off his hoodie.

"Here," he said, coming close and dabbing at Dean's shirt with it to soak up some of the drink.

"Great, now I'll be walking down the street underage and stinking of booze," Dean muttered with a lazy, barely-articulate tongue.

"S'not that bad..."

They were both sluggish and staggering on their feet; Dean had leaned back against the wall at the dimly lit end of the hall they'd reached, and without really realizing it Sam was leaning in toward him a little.

"Shit...When did you get as tall as me?" Dean murmured, as if half to himself.

They were so close that as he spoke, his breath landed on Sam as a delicate, barely tangible point of heat. He felt Dean's voice as a deep vibration in him, a solid ground under their swirling surroundings. Something unknown and unknowable stirred in him warmly, and his hands slowed and then rested where they were on Dean's chest like the world was slowing to a pause.

He closed the tight distance in a motion as easy as falling and this is what happened, he can't say now how it all got there after the many years this has always been three seconds in his memory that his mind always flares at and skips over like a singular erratic heartbeat breaking the steady rhythm of a pulse, but oh it got there, he did do this.

Kissed. Was what happened. He was kissing Dean and he had started it.

In his state, it took Dean a moment of delay to react. But as soon as the sensation and everything else sharpened around him he stiffened all over and grabbed Sam, his hands firm on his shoulders and pushing him back.

" _Sam_ ," he said softly, breathless with shock. He shook his head in one tiny, twitchy movement. "Sam, _no_..."

And remarkably, whenever Sam has looked back on this in the vague and never-lingering way that he could bear to, the thought of it has never been overwhelmed with a deep pit of shame in his stomach, but more with an awed recognition of the depth of his brother's love for him. Because he didn't get angry, even though it obviously scared the hell out of him and anyone would be forgiven for reacting to this in a much less controlled way. He was firm about giving the message that _no_ , that was wrong, no matter how many other ways their family was already totally lost and screwed up, but he didn't shove him away roughly in horror. He didn't say "What the hell's wrong with you?" or "What do you think you're doing?" like he was disgusted. It was already bad enough without him doing anything to make Sam feel worse about it.

He just kept his hands on his shoulders and didn't let go while Sam could no longer meet his the eyes, part of him suddenly starting to feel like he _wanted_ Dean far away from him right then. Not staying put and looking at him, impossibly and unflinchingly still looking at him, trying to understand.

"I..." It was all that came out of Sam's throat, a raspy sound. Saying "Sorry" seemed so beside the point, and he probably looked in that moment like he could cave in on himself with guilt anyway.

Dean gave him a light shake. "Hey," he said gently, his voice still sounding a little shaken. He waited until Sam would look at him again, with just a nervous and quick shift of a glance. "It's okay. Let's just...We should be getting back, right?"

It's what happened after they got back to the apartment that he remembers much more clearly. They'd _really_ lost track of time, and their dad had gotten back by 1:00 and had no idea where they were. It didn't get nearly as ugly as things could sometimes get with him, but he was pretty pissed. They were expressly forbidden to ever give him the slightest reason to worry like this. They were supposed to call, to check in, to be on call, and Dean hadn't even remembered his phone.

But of course this wasn't about the fact that they'd been at some wild party at a stranger's house full of teens getting naked and getting drunk and high on everything under the sun. Of course he wasn't mad about _that_. This was just the usual paranoia, his irrational fear of what it could mean if his sons weren't always completely in his control. In his mind, there was always the risk of anything he'd hunted before and let get away managing to track them, the general danger it brought them that they were connected to this world of things they didn't have the luxury of not knowing are out there.

He mostly took it out on Dean. As if Sam was all his responsibility like he'd always been when he was still a little kid, the same old tired story. It was easy for Sam to see why he would assume this was all on Dean, considering when he'd left them at 7:30 Sam had been holed up in his room hitting the books in silence and with no apparent intention of doing anything else all night, and this kind of behavior wasn't exactly like him either. But the way Dean just took it as usual, not standing up for himself at all and apologizing dejectedly like this entire night was all the consequence of his failure to ever do anything right, just made him sad to look at in that moment. It had been a while since Sam had still looked up to Dean in quite the wide-eyed and idealizing way he had as a kid, but somehow this felt like the final culmination of all the things that had gradually torn down that image he once had of him as some impossible hero with all the answers. And it was too much for him to just stand by and watch.

" _Dad_ , stop blaming him," he finally cut in once he'd gotten too angry to even keep listening. "I was the one who wanted to go out. He didn't convince me to do anything!"

"Shut up, Sammy!" Dean snapped, barely looking at him, as Sam's attempt to interfere and defend him seemed to nudge uncomfortably at some deeply buried frustration in him.

"I'll talk to _you_ later, Sam," John said in a very hard tone. "Don't think you're not in trouble. But Dean's the one who should have known better."

"I'm not a stupid kid!"

Dean was the one who said it. "Yeah, you are!" he shouted, turning to him with as much anger as his dad was still blowing off as if this was suddenly between them. "You're sixteen fucking years old, for Christ sakes, you're _supposed_ to be!"

With Dean looking at him the way he was then and nobody in the room to plead to, Sam had nothing to do but turn around and go shut himself up in his room again. The pages of scribbled notes and math equations spread out on the desk now seemed to frown up at him pathetically in this cramped little room like a cell, keeping him smothered and pressed in so tightly with no room to grow.

 

Sam still has some of the same clothes he owned before he died. When Bobby first saw him alive again shortly after, having no idea yet there was a vital piece missing, he hadn't yet gotten rid of all the clothes he'd been keeping at his house before.

Since waking up, he has changed his outfit and put on one of his oldest jackets. As he sits in the study with the others, he keeps idly smoothing his hands over the sleeves and other parts of it, recognizing the texture and comfortable fit of it, yet waiting for it to feel more familiar like he thinks maybe it should. In a way his body feels no more like a part of him than this jacket, just an added layer.

The jacket is several years old, he recognizes every detail, but now he finds there's a hole torn in one of the pockets. That's new. He thinks. With his hand buried in the pocket, the tiny hole at one bottom corner of it feels kind of familiar as if from a habit of picking at it with his finger. But no, he doesn't remember doing that, he never ripped it there. What the hell did that piece of shit do to his—

A wet street in a dark alley somewhere, he sees it. He was trying to fight off Christian and get a knife out of his hand, stuck struggling with him on the ground for a moment in a position that made the pen stuffed down in his pocket poke into his side, and later he found it had pierced through the seam. But why would Christian—Oh, not really him, a shapeshifter, now he remembers this, must have been when they were after one in Richmond. Yes, the alley was by that club they'd traced it to, and then Gwen caught up to him just in time to save his ass, and after that—

 _"Sam."_

He looks up at hearing his name from Dean. From the way he said it and the way he and Bobby are now looking at him, he can tell it isn't the first time he's tried to get his attention.

Sam shakes his head quickly and says apologetically, "Yeah, I'm here..."

There is a whole mess of multiple layers of concern on Dean's face, but he seems to force all of it aside in favor of letting them all focus on something not so dire and troubling for now. "I said do you want to come along?"

Come along. Come along where? Dean has a list in his hand. That's right, he was talking about getting out of the house for a while, running to the store to pick up some things they all needed.

"Sure, why not?" he finally answers.

"Yeah, get outta here for a while before you both go crazy," Bobby mutters, seated at the desk looking through one of his massive tomes. He must be digging up some lore for whichever hunter just called him about an hour ago, and Sam gets the feeling that no matter how much quiet they can give him to concentrate, their very presence right now is making it too easy for him to get consumed with distracting nerves. Both he and Dean can't help but keep looking at Sam like something that could explode any minute.

He's sure it doesn't help that he isn't quite himself right now and has spent most of the last few hours since he woke up staying quiet and still contained to the same room, but he can't really help it. His body still doesn't seem completely woken up yet after he had so much rest, and he feels so strangely disoriented that just walking is awkward for him; he has to consciously think about the balance of it and putting one foot in front of the other. It isn't making him much slower than is natural, just unbelievably clumsy. Even the size of himself feels weird to maneuver around, like he's never even been in this body before. When he tried to describe this to Dean earlier, he pointed out that "Robo-Sam" as he called him obviously got a little more intense about working out and he's never actually been quite this size before, but it definitely doesn't feel like that's all there is to it.

When he and Dean step outside it's the first time he's been out since waking up, and the brightness of the daylight and the feeling of the sun on his skin is unexplainably surreal. Is it always like this? It's a sensation he knows he recognizes as second nature, but at the same time he's almost uncomfortably sensitive to the warmth, to every sight and feeling and sound.

Looking over his shoulder, Dean notices him looking up at the bright sky. "Does it feel like it's been a while?" he asks, not having to explain what he means.

Sam shakes his head in bewilderment as he catches up next to him. "It does...and it doesn't," he says.

He almost walks into the bumper of a car they're passing, and the quick movement he makes to miss it which would usually never throw him off so much makes him almost stumble. Grinning a little, Dean reaches out and catches his arm as he steadies himself again with a sigh of frustrated annoyance.

"Jeez, you're even worse now than when you were going through your first growth spurts," he says.

Sam gives a half-hearted laugh. "Don't remind me."

And then, with a glint of sunlight shining off a black surface and finding his eyes, he realizes they've reached the car.

The _car..._

They're approaching the passenger seat side and something in the back seat is catching his eye, something he can't even see from this angle, just remembers. Something he's always been so used to being there he hardly even sees it most of the time, except _now_ it's the most prominent thing that grabs him, a distinct shape in his mind's eye.

"Sam?" Dean is watching him attentively now that he's gone very still. "You okay?"

He steps farther forward, just enough to see into the back seat, and there it is. The toy soldier stuck in part of the door, right where it's been since they were kids. And right here where he's standing is where he was standing then, beating Dean within an inch of his life while he tried relentlessly to reach him by telling him it was okay, he wasn't going to leave him...

Before it was all over, he stared down into the unfathomably dark and deep hole and then looked back at Dean, preparing himself for the hardest thing he'd ever done. The last thing he knew was that fear and the straining pain of his determination while he saw Dean's face for a last moment, the will power it took to keep control of his body and then tear himself away from him and leave him behind. Beyond that moment and the fall down there was nothing, the past fifteen months a void of walking around numb after how horrible it felt to do that, God he doesn't ever want to feel like that again, doesn't think he could take the two of them being torn apart any more. By now his heart is tattered raw from it, his heart with the memory of Dean's face that he held onto desperately through his fear like he did his favorite teddy bear as a little kid while petrified of the thing in his closet, swearing from the moment he and Michael started falling that nothing in Hell would take that away from him, while _forever_ they fell and fell—

Oh. There it is.

"Sam?" Dean says again, starting to sound more unsettled. He comes right in front of him, getting between him and the Impala, and grabs his arms. "What is it? Is it the wall?"

The wall, holy shit. It is so immense and _everywhere_ , containing so much of him. It hangs over his head like an inescapable black sky, pushing down heavily, and the _pressure_...

"Ignore it, Sam!" Dean says urgently. "You _can't_ scratch the wall, remember?" He shakes Sam to make him look up at him, and then he reaches a hand up to the back of his neck. "Just stay here, with me, right? You're here now and you're fine. Just remember that."

"I know," Sam says with a quick nod. "I'm okay..."

But he's sure he doesn't look okay. Maybe he isn't trying to peek into it yet, but it feels like this dark gaping hole has just been ripped open inside him now rather than just discovered as something that's been there this whole time. He finds himself reaching up to grip onto Dean's shirt like he suddenly needs to be sure he's really right here in front of him and can hardly believe it. He feels like they're back there in the cemetery with the mouth of Lucifer's cage opened up behind him, except this time the last thing he should do is jump in, and if he doesn't hold onto Dean he'll fall right in backwards.

"Jesus," he whispers in shock. "I really was...gone."

The look in Dean's eyes now makes it all the more real. It is grief too deep to stare into and fathom, even if it's just a phantom remnant still lingering from that year. "Yeah," he says, his voice tight.

And maybe he doesn't remember, but while he's seeing it all in Dean's eyes it's like he doesn't have to. To a part of him it may seem like he's been seeing Dean all the time the past few months, but now everything in his gut is reacting like that isn't so and making him pull Dean closer. As they grab each other into a tight hug and then just breathe deeply holding onto each other, he can feel how much, for how long, how hopelessly he has missed Dean. The feeling of this and the way they fit together is so familiar, as it could never stop being to him, but also like something from long ago. So very long ago that it brings tears brimming in his eyes as he's overwhelmed with the mere sense of time, of age.

The vague but deep understanding of how much of him there is now that is not connected to Dean or in any way shaped or defined by him comes over him like the sudden recognition of a horribly vast and desolate desert within him. It's a devastating sense of loneliness, as if he's gone through his whole trying and tiring life without anyone to share his burdens or truly understand him, as if he wasn't born with a brother at all. The momentary surfacing of it and knowledge that it's there, over a hundred years of separation and torture shaping him into something unrecognizable as Dean's brother, makes him hold him even tighter and bury his face in the smell of Dean's leather jacket.

Dean is breathing like he might also be close to crying, smoothing his fingers in his hair. "Hey, I know," he mutters softly. "Never again, right? I'm getting sick of these weepy intense reunions every time one of us has to get yanked back from the grave."

"No...Not gonna leave again," Sam murmurs, pulling back a little. "I promise." He lets out a heavy sigh, the tightness in his chest releasing a little. "I mean...I'm kind of pissed about that idiotic stunt you pulled just to get Death to come to you, and just so you know I really don't feel right about how this whole escapade pretty much unmade the whole other life you were building for yourself while living without me...But I'm here, so I'm just going to have to figure out a way to make up for all that and set things right by being here. I'm not going to screw this up, so don't worry."

The chances that that will actually work and keep Dean from worrying about him scratching at the past are pretty damn slim, but Dean does look reassured for the time being to hear him say it. He touches him lightly on the chest before turning to go around the car.

"You better not fucking die on me again either," Sam says as they both get into their seats.

"I don't think that'll happen any time soon," Dean says with an easy shrug. "Not with the connections and influence our client has. We've got Death watching out for us right now."

There's a moment of silence between them as Dean starts the ignition. Then Sam shakes his head with a short, dark laugh as a delayed reaction.

"What?" Dean asks.

He shrugs. "Nothing. That just might be the most ironic thing I've ever heard."


	2. part 2/6

Dean and his dad happened to be working a case in California around Sam's twentieth birthday. If John realized this and thought at all about the coming date—which, _of course_ he did—he didn't say anything about it, naturally.

On the day before, Dean was wiping an encrusting of rock salt off his boots after they'd just finished the job and made it back to their motel room when his dad got a call from a friend in New Mexico. He was hunting something that John had a lot more experience with and thought he could probably use some help taking care of it. It was sure to be nothing more than a two-man job and to only take a couple days once John got there, so he took off on his own later that night, telling Dean he might as well stick around there in Vallejo and catch some R&R until they met up again later.

Once he was left alone in the motel room, the question scratched in the back of his mind of whether or not his dad expected he would probably try to visit Sam. But he didn't know why he should care what he thought about it, if he thought about it. He _didn't_ care. Right?

He called Sam at midnight. Said "Hey, happy birthday, man" and he'd had no idea what to expect but it was only somewhat awkward, and only at first. Sam said he'd just come back from a night out with a couple friends and he sounded like he was in a good mood.

"Some friends, huh?" he asked. "How hot is she?"

Sam's laughter was a softly brushing thing against his ear, miles away yet so palpable and near in its familiarity to him. "You are so predictable," he answered, nothing in his voice but fondness and a smile Dean wished he could see.

So then he mentioned he was in the state not far from him, possibly exaggerating just a little how conveniently close to Stanford he was, and before he knew how it happened they'd made some vague and spontaneous plans for him to come see him the next evening.

He had expected he would have to call Sam once he reached his building and when he got there, laxly approaching the latest time he'd said he would probably make it, he was a little surprised to find him actually waiting outside for him. He was just standing out on the steps with his hands dug in his pockets, without even a book bag or anything with him. When Dean approached, he smiled at him in a slowly relaxing and warming way, like he must have had time since their conversation on the phone to have some nervous doubts about whether this was such a good idea but couldn't have realized how good it would be just to see him again until they were actually face-to-face. Dean figured his own face was showing the same kind of relief as he found he literally couldn't _not_ grin back in response.

If he had to describe it, he couldn't have put his finger on exactly how Sam had changed in the past couple years, but almost everything about him was just slightly off somehow and not quite like he remembered. He'd grown even taller, filled out more in frame, and somehow just had a bigger presence literally and figuratively that seemed to fill and overwhelm Dean's view at every moment. He seemed less intense and constantly focused, softened some around the edges and generally more at ease. When Dean gave him a brief and loose hug, it even seemed that he smelled a little different. He was so _of_ this place, settled comfortably with the innocent civilians and collecting a layer of the local dust.

As they hung out in his dorm room and then walked around town talking about what was new, which was everything, Sam would speak in this so casually certain and hopeful way about things like some crazy-sophisticated biology class with a professor everyone loved that he'd wanted to take this year but couldn't get into. Hearing all of this stuff firing off his tongue, Dean could only think of how ridiculously in charge of everything in life he sounded and how weird and unknown to him that was. He'd never made any kind of big and specific decisions like that in his life and would never even know where to start looking at a course catalog, and how the hell was it anyway that Sammy was so different he'd had the perspective to wake up one day and think about not just sausage-or-bacon but _I want to leave where I am and see palm trees instead, I want to go to this college, I want pre-law, I want this kind of salary, to feed this kind of dog one day._

The more Sam talked this way, it made him sound kind of self-important and full of himself, honestly, but Dean knew that could only be how it seemed to him as the dumb outsider. Yeah, he was an _outsider_ looking in on his brother's life now and he could tell Sam was just trying to find things to talk about that wouldn't be too awkward, that was all. The irony.

Maybe it stung a little to see all of it right in front of him. His brother's new life he was making for himself, the whole strange _otherness_ about him because of the time he'd spent out of the hunting world and the differences in him that were hard to adjust to. But he'd been quietly nursing some bitterness about this for a long time without even seeing him, and now that he was here and it looked like Sam really was a lot happier, it actually kind of made it okay. He could accept it enough for now to just enjoy being here today, at least. Dean couldn't help still feeling a sense of loss for the brother he'd once had always by his side before Sam got his own life. But Sam had built all of this for himself out of fucking nothing, pursued his own path with no encouragement from anyone and only his own stubborn determination, and now he was this almost entirely new person with a dorm filled with only his own stuff and lots of friends despite never having been taught how to make them. Sam was his own man now, and a part of him knew that was reason to feel proud of him, not something to regret.

"My _God_ you're rusty," he remarked later as they were shooting pool at a bar and Sam had just missed his third pocket in a row. "You aren't even making it any fun for me to kick your ass."

"I was never as good as you," Sam said with a shrug, watching him smoothly hit a ball into a corner pocket.

"Yeah, but you were better than this," he said as Sam leaned over and aimed for the solid yellow. "I _taught_ you better than this."

"Quit distracting me. It's my birthday, you better let me win."

"How, by just missing? At the rate you're putting them in, we'd be here all night."

"Bite me," Sam said, though he seemed unable to stop grinning a little, just as he'd started acting kind of silly with him all night. Unfocused, distracted, high on nothing.

Dean was feeling it, too. Somehow in this place that had become Sam's escape from their family freak show, it actually felt like all the monsters were far away. He wasn't even thinking about hunting.

After they went to sit at the bar for a while, Sam was on the second beer Dean had bought him when he finally had to ask. In a quiet and delicately approaching kind of voice he said, "Does Dad know you're here?"

He ran a thumb up and down his glass, making lines in the condensation. "I'm sure he'll put it together," he answered simply. "You know Dad. He knows everything I do, sooner or later."

"Yeah...I can't say I miss that." Sam seemed to be taking care not to sound too disdainful.

He shrugged. "Whatever, with Dad it kinda beats having to _talk_ about everything, so I guess it suits us fine that he can assume almost everything on his own. And it's not like he actively stalks me, he can't help it."

"Uh-huh," Sam said doubtfully with a raised eyebrow.

"Seriously! It's his job to know how to put things together and read people. He just doesn't miss anything."

Sam shook his head slowly with that in mind, actually smiling a bit. A faint and dry kind of smile, but still. "I remember how freaky it used to be sometimes, how easily he could tell if you were lying."

Dean let out a single light laugh, grinning lazily at specific memories the comment drew up. The moment seemed to perceptibly pass, and he knew they wouldn't mention him again.

Later in the night they'd moved on to a different bar where they could still get a bite to eat past 11:00. They were picking at the last remains of food in the grease-polished bottoms of their meal baskets, Dean bobbing his head lightly in approval of the Animals song pouring out of the jukebox.

"What were you up to in the area anyway?" Sam asked, reaching across the table to take some of Dean's fries. He'd actually been convinced to have a couple shots with him by then and was on his sixth beer, seeming to sag more and more heavily in his seat by the minute.

"Just a routine haunting, you know," Dean said, thinking it might not be best to elaborate.

"Did you meet the spirit of a Zodiac victim or something?"

"Nah, nothing that exciting. Just a teenager who threw himself in front of a car in '66 and kept showing up as a death echo on the same road the same day every year. Caused at least eight crashes over the years from freaking out drivers."

"Yeah, I can imagine. Shit. Easy enough to get rid of?"

Dean nodded. "Nice clean burial. The hardest part was just getting detailed accounts. People will tell the police or the papers one thing, you know, and then start doubting themselves later and decide they must have been seeing things or just got a prank played on them. We nearly turned around and left the town assuming there was either nothing there or nothing we could dig up..."

Sam's expression was attentive and impassive as he listened, but he started feeling a little ridiculous and shook his head.

"Whatever, I know this can't really be the kind of thing you want to talk about or... _think_ about," he dismissed with a wave of his hand.

Sam shrugged, draining the last inch of gold in the bottom of his glass. "Hell, I don't care...That was my life, too, wasn't it? And I can't talk about it with anyone here."

Something halfway clicked in Dean's head then, an inelegantly whittled-out fragment of realization. How Sam had sounded on the phone the night before, how noticeably laid-back and content he seemed now. He considered, just fleetingly, if it wasn't just the changes of this new life molding around him so agreeably that he was seeing, but also in part just the way Sam was doing at this isolated point in time. If his unexpected call last night hadn't simply caught Sam at a good time but was actually the reason he'd sounded happy on the phone. If he was so relaxed and comfortable today because it was the first time in two years he'd been in the company of someone he didn't have to constantly pretend with. The _only_ someone he didn't have to pretend with and apparently didn't resent too much to even think about talking to again...

Sam was now looking down at Dean's also empty glass in thought. He smiled a little and broke the seasoning silence asking, "Dude...where you planning to crash anyway?"

He was obviously recognizing that Dean wasn't in any condition to go anywhere else tonight. He hadn't really thought about it yet. "The car, I guess," he said with a shrug.

"Hm. 'Kay..."

"...What?"

Sam, always the damn overachiever, was still using school housing because he was staying there over the summer taking some extra classes. The whole campus was sleepy and quiet, most of the students gone back to families they'd missed and places they called home, and there were so few residents in Sam's building that they saw nobody at all this time they went in and back up to his room. He had his whole half of the floor to himself, in fact. Dean wondered if that got kind of depressing, but they were now feeling all the drinks they'd had pretty heavily and had fallen into a tired silence, so he stayed quiet and didn't ask.

Because Sam wasn't sharing his room, he'd moved both of the tiny dorm beds together to form one that was probably just big enough to fit his whole length if he lied across it diagonally. As soon as they came in, Sam tossed his keys onto the desk with an exhausted sigh and didn't bother to turn on the light before immediately sinking down onto the bed. Dean followed and sat down next to him, just automatically gravitating toward the nearest place he could get off his feet for a moment. He leaned back on his elbows and gave a lazy look around the room.

"Home sweet home, huh?" he murmured softly.

"Heh," Sam said, a short and dark-sounding laugh. "Well. Beats the car..."

Or motel rooms, Dean heard.

They both lied back, shifting around awkwardly until they were both more or less stretched across the block of two mattresses. When Sam settled down to stay, brushing his hair out of his face as he put his head down on a pillow, he was lying on his side facing Dean. Then, like he still couldn't quite relax and not move, he reached his hand around to the back of Dean's neck. He felt the brush of his fingers against his skin as he tucked in the tag of his shirt that had been sticking out. Sam's hand heavily dragged over his shoulder as he drew it back away, then lowered back down to the mattress where it sat still closer to Dean than himself.

Dean didn't know or even think about why he'd started breathing harder than he should have been while just lying still. Or why something was holding him back from looking Sam in the eye right then. But then he did look up, couldn't help it, and they did meet eyes. The look in Sam's was so tired and soft and resigned, yet sharp somehow in the way they were fixed on the point near enough to be just visible that was him.

Sam licked his top lip absently and then his lips parted open, drawing in a slow breath as if in anticipation, which pulled Dean's eyes down to the faint outline of his mouth in the covering dimness. When Dean turned his body closer into his, the simple but world-shifting movement toward him was like the automatic answer to a question Sam hadn't asked. He hadn't even meant to move but it was done, their faces nuzzling tentatively a moment as they found the angle almost blindly in the darkness, like silently stirring animals in the night following just scent and instinct. And as if he was grabbing a slippery fish right out of water as it brushed by, getting a dart pinned down at the right split second in the dead-center of impossible, Dean closed his eyes and kissed him.

Sam pressed against him even closer and then Dean felt him gently touching his neck again, fingers brushing so lightly over the sensitive skin in a way that sent a tiny shiver through him. They were kissing languidly and sloppily, breathing loudly, breathing into each other. Sam gave a deep satisfied hum in his throat, the sound a reverberating and softly beckoning grind against Dean's chest where his heart was starting to get worked up enough he could feel his own pulse.

He reached under Sam's shirt and smoothed his fingers over tight muscle and warm skin, exploring the planes of his back with his hands and holding him as tightly as ever as Sam started trailing warm kisses down his neck. Meanwhile Sam's hands were creeping downward and then working at the fly of Dean's jeans.

Sam. Sam smelled like sun, like neat green lawns flushing bright with color under its rays, and like something else that couldn't be identified at all. His voice didn't sound like it had when he was sixteen and this room where they were was like no place at all, not known to him so just indistinct darkness all around.

So there was nothing familiar to focus on and sharpen around, nothing near enough to make his skin raise and bring him out of it, as if this could all be some dream. Sam had never answered the phone, as if he would, as if this could ever, them, like this. And when Sam reached down into his boxers and his hand closed around him in a first light tug, Dean just breathed in sharply and snapped still for an instant, his whole body jerking in the first reaction. Then he closed his eyes again with a low moan as Sam kept stroking him slowly, an obstructive black curtain falling over his mind.

Their mouths met again, opening and wet and warm, melding first with relaxed and coaxing movements of their tongues and then a more fervent and insatiable pressure. After a blur of time passing Dean was shuddering, all the indistinct shapes trembling, and his final weak groan came out buried against the mouth still covering his as he was delivered with a last firm stroke that made his vision bloom into utter blankness. He went loose and still, a puppet cut from its strings, and knew nothing more.

Before he opened his eyes in the morning, he remembered where he was because he could hear Sam's breathing and knew the sound instantly. That one thing about him was still recognizable, and it sounded much too close, and _oh_...

He made himself open his eyes. Sam was curled in close to him, his head tucked under his chin. His hand was still in Dean's pants, partially at least, a few of his fingers hooked inside the open zipper where they'd just dropped heavily as they both passed out.

Dean drew in a deep, tense breath. He turned away from Sam, rolling out of the bed, and stood up on clumsy and weak feet. Facing away from the sight of him, he zipped up his jeans, closed his eyes and rubbed them with the balls of his hands until he saw spots. Then he went to the door and walked out, got away, dragging himself down the hall barefoot to get to the bathroom.

His hands were shaking as he went to a sink and turned on the faucet. He splashed his face repeatedly with cold water and then pulled his shirt up to dab himself dry. For a few seconds he stood there leaning over with his hands gripping the sink, and then something started collapsing in him so heavily it was like he couldn't move at first...

 _"You're with me, you're safe."_

It all settled and registered unavoidably, a sharp twist in his stomach. He turned fast to dart into the nearest stall, throwing the door open with a bang that echoed desolately in the too-empty and too-quiet building, and he practically fell to the floor by the toilet just before he threw up.

Hey happy birthday, listen I'm not far from you right now see I can be happy for you can act normal too. Like some jackass. Then grab back on too tight or whatever the hell it was, so much he might as well have shoved him back away, then _remind_ him...

You made this happen, a voice pounded through his pulse as he went back to the room to grab his stuff. Let them get twisted up all wrong somehow, he didn't know. His head was burning white-hot with the effort of pushing it away and trying to understand it all at once. He'd made Sam think he wanted it somehow, not acted right with him, never had, or something. Maybe needed some new kind of claim on him now that he was not even like part of his family anymore, slipping farther from reach all the time, but _God_ he hadn't wanted...

He wanted things to go back to the way they used to be. He just wanted Sam to be thirteen again instead of this new thing that was deep-voiced and broad-shouldered and confusing.

But Sam had left, and things weren't going to go back to like before. The night he and John had had that fight about college and he'd left, for Dean it hadn't really sunk in right away that he was gone. For a while he kept thinking it had to just be Sam's ridiculous and extreme way of rebelling and it couldn't be what he really wanted, that he'd change his mind soon enough and come back. Then the months had gradually gnawed away at that hope until _Fuck him anyway_ was a raw and stinging tattoo of repeating words in the back of his mind that stayed stuck there to block access to any other thoughts of him, which almost never worked.

This was different. It felt final. It felt like he had to keep himself physically moving or else the shock would completely control him and he might get sick again.

So he kept his hands busy and moving as he looked at Sam one last time, still asleep just as he'd left him. He took Sam's shoes off his feet and drew his blanket up over him because it was what he should have been doing last night, taking care of him, and that was what he would be doing here in the last few minutes he spent breathing the same air as his brother for what he knew would be a very long time.

He still looked happy somehow, even while asleep. How was that possible?

It was a three-block walk to the spot where Dean had parked the Impala. The bright summer sun slowly burned the memory off of his skin as he steadily made his way there, and by the time he was driving away with the loud radio stimulating him into finer consciousness, it was easier to feel as if it hadn't actually been real.

He drove straight back to Vallejo and checked back into the same motel. He requested the same room he and his dad had been staying in before even though it was just him now. When John finished his hunt in New Mexico and called to ask where he was, he'd be watching TV with a beer in hand and his shirt collecting crumbs, planted firmly on one of the beds as if he never left.

 

Sam sleeps in for most of the morning again and Dean spends it outside helping Bobby work on a truck he's fixing up for somebody. Later after Sam gets up, Bobby makes them grilled cheese and potato wedges like he used to sometimes when they were kids. He puts on his stupid apron and everything. There must be some vague and perhaps not completely intentional meaning in the gesture of him fixing them comfort food and something they all remember from a long time ago now that they're all back together and it's still kind of impossible to believe, but Dean and Sam both know better than to acknowledge it.

Smelling the food cooking makes Dean so hungry that he holds off on taking a shower and changing out of the shirt he was working in so he can wait in the kitchen with the others and dig in the moment it's ready. Sam sits across from him yawning wide about once every minute, seeming strangely unable to sit still for someone who's still a little tired. He keeps shifting position in his chair and accidentally kicking Dean under the table as he moves around. At one point Dean feels like kicking him back just to play around and annoy him, but he's not totally sure Sam is even aware that he's doing it. As they've been sitting mostly in silence, he's gone back to looking the way he does so often now, like his mind is somewhere very far away and out of reach.

He acts a lot more responsive while they're all eating, following the conversation after Dean brings up the research Bobby spent all of yesterday doing for a hunter who's looking into a very vicious and suspicious-sounding killing spree that just happened aboard a ship coming here from Australia. Then after Dean has gone silent a while, drifting into his own speculations about all the monsters native to other countries that keep popping up, he notices that Sam is staring at his shoulder.

The T-shirt he grabbed before going to work outside is the one that's ripped there. Sam's eyes are drawn to the patch of skin pressing through the torn gap in the seam only briefly and surreptitiously enough, but with a slightly intense look that is what grabs Dean's attention. Sam looks back down at his food without catching Dean looking back at him, and there's something nervous and uneasy about his expression and the way he seems to make a point of keeping his eyes away from anyone else for a while. Like he's off in that other place again, remembering.

Like he's remembering staring at him there before.

 

In the couple weeks following his last conversation with Lisa and the unsettling discovery of what was wrong with Sam, Dean could feel himself always close to unraveling. There was a silent clock ticking now, a pounding need to get to the bottom of what had happened to Sam and fix it. The clock numbered the minutes, days and months that his brother, his _real_ brother, continued to be tortured in the cage when there may still be something that could save him. It measured the distance growing between him and the home he'd found against all odds during the year he spent learning to walk around with the open bleeding wound, as he was aware all the time that the life he'd left behind when Sam showed up alive probably became harder to ever return to the longer it took him to settle all this unfinished business.

His head was overcrowded with loose ends and responsibilities, constantly distracted. _It_ was the last thing on his mind. Or should have been. But Sam's presence, in light of what he now understood, was a disturbing and also morbidly entrancing thing. He couldn't stop himself from watching him like the object of curiosity he was, and he also sometimes just wished he could ignore him altogether. He always felt an immediate relief whenever he was left alone after being with him a long time. He knew in part it had to just be a natural fear of what he didn't understand. He'd seen a lot of crazy things but nothing to let him know what to expect with a person with no soul, and this was his _brother,_ not just a case he could approach like any other without it getting to him a bit.

He also knew it might be more than that, though. He knew it one time when they came into their room out of some heavy rainfall and Sam immediately peeled off his soaked shirt, when Dean stiffened up and swallowed, momentarily looking down to avoid the sight without even knowing why. It wasn't like there was anything unusual or un-Sam-like in the action itself, but there was always something so potently physical about this Sam and the way he moved and carried himself, especially because of how he'd bulked up his body. Or maybe the difference was mostly in his head, with all the things that couldn't possibly be on his mind but were too close and present not to be, Sam who wasn't Sam, who was all body and raw desire with no inhibitions.

No, the uneasiness he felt around him wasn't just fear of what this person was. It was a little more than that. The vague overhanging sense that anything could happen.

And when he caught Sam looking at him that certain way a second time, he snapped a little.

They had stopped for gas. While the tank filled up, Dean leaned against the car drinking from a bottle of water. Sam had just come back out after buying a drink inside as he was taking a long last swig. Then he wiped his mouth and his lightly sweating forehead with the back of his wrist, closing his eyes a moment and sighing through the assault of the peaking afternoon heat. When he opened his eyes again, Sam hadn't moved from where he'd last noticed him standing. He had leaned his hip against the side of the car, at the opposite end from where Dean was, turned slightly toward him. Dean looked directly over at him and found his eyes rested on him absently while his hands idly picked at the label on his soda bottle. He was gazing out of the corner of his eye more than staring at him directly, but it was with an intensity that was unmistakable, leaving no question of what he was thinking and making Dean's skin crawl.

"Why don't you take a damn picture, huh?" he said.

Sam took the hint from his not-the-least-bit-amused tone. He put his hands up and raised his eyebrows in a way that seemed to mean "Fine, suit yourself" before turning to go get back in the passenger seat.

After they'd been back on the road for just a few minutes, he wouldn't quite let it slide away.

"To be honest, I don't really get why you don't want to," he said.

Dean's mouth was a hard line of complete silence. He kept looking ahead as if he hadn't heard him say anything, or as if there wasn't even anyone else in the car.

"So, what, _you're_ the only one who can look?" he complained mildly, his tone staying so light and easy. "As long as that's all we're doing. I mean sure, it's not like there's any harm in shamelessly objectifying the soulless guy, but that's kind of—"

"I don't." Dean's voice was stiff and quiet, so completely different from his almost joking tone. "You're...I don't know what you think, but I haven't been."

There was a pause before Sam spoke again, his voice chillingly certain and unwavering. "I know what I know."

Dean's eyes burned into the road ahead more severely than ever.

"You said yourself I'm not really your brother anyway," Sam pressed on. "Not as long as I'm walking around without a soul. So..."

"Right," Dean said gruffly, "and if you did have a soul then you'd understand why I can't. Not _ever."_

"Well, I do understand why you couldn't before. You know, more or less. Maybe I even understand a little more about the whole thing than you."

Dean's eyes finally flicked over at him, shooting out a hot warning.

Sam just shrugged. "Hey, same melon, remember? And he knew why you never would, beyond the _obvious_ problem, I mean. It's not rocket science."

 _"Shut up."_ The low, tense demand shot out of him almost against his will. It was a much too delicate detail that Sam never would have disclosed, maybe nothing he hadn't known already but still opening up more than should ever be said.

"Okay, never mind about him," Sam said, in poor imitation of having the tact to avoid a certain subject. "But I'm just saying the usual rules don't apply here. There's no reason to worry about making me ashamed, or that this is only our way-beyond-normal dependance on each other making us confused—just _confused_ for so much of our lives it's lasted longer than most marriages—oh, and that that's somehow _your_ fault or whatever, I'm sure. All that doesn't matter because I'm _not_ him and I really couldn't give a crap."

The completely casual and detached nonchalance with which he could talk about this was making Dean's blood run cold. "I said shut the fuck up," he muttered sharply, and then turned up his music loud enough that their ears would be ringing later. Sam shrugged again, calm as ever, and leaned slightly toward the window to settle in comfortably for the ride.

 

On the fourth day Sam has been walking the earth again, Bobby starts moving back and forth around the house, bringing a bunch of recently delivered packages into the study from where they've been accumulating by the bottom of the stairs. By the time Dean comes out of the kitchen unrolling his sleeves after doing some dishes, Bobby has moved all of them to the desk. Sam looks up from his laptop and then they're both staring at the collection of unknown items with the same vague question on their faces.

"You boys need a job?" Bobby asks.

They're all shipments of books, of course. Some brand new, some ancient-looking, some not even in English. Now that so many hunters are encountering supernatural creatures that have never even been seen on this continent before, Bobby's library needs a little expanding so he can be better equipped to deal with what he has no experience dealing with.

He gives them a rundown on how he keeps his library organized and catalogued, with such thorough detail that Sam gets the impression this is something he thinks the two of them ought to know for future reference and he is partly using the need to give them something to do right now as an opportunity to show them all this. It kind of reminds him of when Dean suddenly felt the need to teach Sam a few things about looking after the car after he made his deal, except Bobby shouldn't be dying any time soon so there's nothing necessarily grim about it.

While Bobby finishes up some work outside, he and Dean sit on the floor opening up all the packages and then going through each book to record and categorize the subjects they cover. After he's been feeling helplessly restless all day, it does surprisingly much for Sam's mood just to be able to work on something pertaining to their current crisis, however indirectly. He's still about as good as stoned all the time with how rusty his coordination and reflexes are and how easily overwhelming everything can be to his senses, and he probably isn't quite ready to survive driving a vehicle anywhere, much less any of the armed-and-ready leg work of hunting that might help him regain a strong sense of himself right now. But whether it's doing the research or getting updated fake IDs or applying for new credit cards under bogus names, he's used to this job always involving quite a lot of mundane work in between the points of action, so it's not like this feels significantly different from what he would usually be doing.

He chooses not to think too much about how strange it is that he'd find it kind of disheartening when he has nothing to do as a hunter, that _this_ kind of activity is where he can find motivation and affirmation of who he is now. The way Bobby instructed them on this was a subtle but unquestionable demonstration of his reliance on them and that he feels he can invest some kind of hopes in them for the future, the way normal fathers can accept that they'll be gone one day because they can always be optimistic about their children, and Sam is finding that strangely uplifting and ironic only in a truly funny way, so he's not about to ruin the moment by thinking too hard about the hopeless freak this means he's become.

Dean has other ideas. When Sam has been going through the same Italian text for twenty minutes, translating chapter titles and illustration captions by checking everything on his computer that isn't close enough to Latin for him to figure out, Dean looks over at him so hard at work and says, "If I didn't know any better I'd think you've missed this research crap."

He rolls his eyes and replies sarcastically, "I thought I _loved_ doing research. You've always tried to convince me of that because you never want to do it."

"If I offered, you'd just do it anyway to make sure I didn't miss anything."

"Yeah, I probably would. What the hell, it's making me so nervous seeing you try to crack a book open that I'll probably end up going over all your work you do _today_ just in case."

"Fuck you very much. When was the last time _you_ did anyway? Just for fun, I mean."

"What, open a book?" Sam says with a short laugh. He thinks and can't really give a certain answer, but just shakes his head and shrugs it off. "Still more recent than it was for you, I'm sure. If you've _ever_ done such a thing."

"You kidding me? I've got to lend you this one Lisa's sister got her to read, about the Elizabeth Short murder. I think I've still got it buried in my glove compartment. One of those hard-boiled crime novels, freakin' _filthy_ though, not like some lame Humphrey Bogart movie. It's got some hot lesbian action and everything."

Sam, initially distracted by taking note of how easily Dean seems able to mention Lisa now, then actually starts taking in what Dean is saying and looks up at him slowly. "You've read _The Black Dahlia_?" he says in complete disbelief.

Dean looks slightly annoyed. _"You_ have?"

He shrugs. "Didn't finish it. Kind of intense."

He scoffs kind of mockingly, as if this conversation has turned merely competitive and he's satisfied there's one book in the whole world he has read all of which Sam hasn't. It _is_ a pretty monumental accomplishment for him, he has to admit.

"Tried reading a couple other things but I got bored with them too fast," Dean then admits. "I think me liking that one book was just a fluke."

"I'm not gonna comment on what that probably says about you," Sam says, his tone only teasing.

Dean smirks dryly. "Yeah...Maybe I've been more of a simple man now, but I guess it still takes a lot to shock me or even hold my attention."

The words sound a little strange to Sam. Now that he has his soul back, he appreciates more than he was able to before the small ways that Dean seems changed, observing all of it with more interest. And he's pretty sure even once he adjusts to being back he's not going to be quite the same person he was back when he brought down Lucifer, either. In just the past few days their interaction has held a sense that they're re-learning each other, like everything is both old and new territory between them. Dean is still very much Dean, made of the same stuff, just with more facets cut out of him. The time he's spent living an ordinary life after knowing nothing else but the hunting world for so long hasn't made him simple or even more predisposed to simple ways, as far as Sam can tell. It's only made him a more complicated man.

After Sam finally finishes cataloging the book in Italian and finds the appropriate place to put it away, he gives a close glance over the spines of the whole library while he's standing at the shelves. As he goes to sit back down on the floor, he says, "What do you imagine his whole collection is worth?"

Dean widens his eyes at the thought. "Oh, hell. A _lot._ You wouldn't know it seeing how often he'll use one as a coaster for a glass of whisky, but Dad used to say some of these are so rare and valuable he didn't even want to _know_ how he got his hands on them."

"You don't think he ever stooped to doing business with Bela, do you?" Sam wonders.

Reserving comment, he just says, "I wouldn't think of suggesting such a thing in his house."

As if on cue, his words are closely followed by the sound of the back door opening as Bobby comes back inside, which makes Sam laugh softly. His footsteps then go up the stairs, and a moment later Sam notices Dean smiling to himself about something.

"What?" he asks.

Dean shakes his head. "That just kind of reminds me of something...You remember the Ironsons? You would have been pretty young the last time Dad saw them."

"Uh, Louie and Janie Ironson? I remember Dad talking about them. Their names are too cute to forget."

"Yeah. Dad told me this story once about their wedding that I guess he heard from someone else. Half the people at that wedding were hunters, because they both came from _that_ kind of family, and—"

"Wait, and his were named _Ironson?_ Did they change it as an inside joke or something?"

"I know, right? But hey, Winchester isn't much better."

Sam shrugs. "Heh. That's true."

"But get this, their friends who got them flatware as a wedding gift made a point of buying them all _gold-plated_ stuff instead of silver."

Sam automatically bursts out laughing, guessing where this was going.

"All the other hunters there laughed as soon as they saw this while everyone else didn't get what was so funny."

"Because they knew anything silver they gave them would just end up getting melted down for bullets sooner or later," Sam assumed, still laughing a little. "Oh man. I think I remember Dad telling me about that before, I forgot...I wonder what happened to those guys. He never mentioned still being in touch with them much anymore by the time I left."

"Yeah. Same old story, I'd assume," Dean says with a shrug, meaning of course that John must have done something sooner or later to get on their bad side.

In the following relaxed silence, Sam puts aside the book he has open on his lap and leans back against the couch, stretching his arms over his head. He finds Dean watching him idly for a moment, looking very calm for once, and for barely more than the blink of an eye they exchange small, barely-there smiles before lowering their eyes again. It's an odd thing, the kind of look that passes between strangers, but nice somehow. It feels good for them to have an easy time working on something, to be able to laugh just a little over something; Sam knows they're both thinking that now in the trail of the moment as it sinks in, an odd and delicately suspended feeling that they get to be different people right now.

Late that night Bobby finds them watching TV while recovering from a heavy dinner and says, "Sam. You all bright 'n' bushy-tailed yet?"

Lazily rolling his head to the side to look over at him in the doorway, Sam raises an eyebrow. "Depends what I have to do," he says.

"Get messed up again," Bobby answers, revealing a bottle of whisky he's carrying. "Are we ever gonna celebrate that I trapped your stupid ass in my basement before you could go Jack Nicholson on me and you've busted out of Satan's bitch prison, or what?"

Their faces both crack into smiles. "Since when do hunters drink to _celebrate_ anything?" Dean asks.

"If it were the rule, we'd never drink. C'mon." Bobby takes a wad of bills out of his shirt pocket and goes over to slap them into Sam's hand. "That's all the money you lost to me way too easily because you were planning to kill me by the end of the night anyway—which is how I expected something was up, by the way, so thanks for that. Enjoy it, 'cause I'm about to win it back."

"Is that right?" Sam says, challenge clearly accepted.

While they sit around the kitchen table playing cards, Sam eventually has to ask, "Bobby, since when do you have a trap door anyway?" and that gets a laugh from Dean. This leads to Bobby telling them a story that's probably only so funny because it's far enough in the past, about a time he trapped Rufus through that door just to break up a fight between him and Billy Harvelle because he happened to walk right over it at an opportune moment and they were both getting so pissed Bobby thought one of them was going to put the other in the hospital.

"Hey, Bobby...," Dean says while pouring himself a third drink. "You know whatever happened to Louie and Janie? You know, that couple from Arkansas. Did my dad just lose their number or did they bite it somewhere?"

"Oh no, they're still around," Bobby says.

Sam gives a look of slight surprise. "Still hunting?"

"Yeah, every once in a while. Last I heard. They finally caught their Moby Dick about eight years ago and then settled down a bit, went mostly off the radar in the hunter community. They got a fourteen-year-old son who don't even know what they do."

Freezing in the middle of raising his glass to his face, Dean says, "You're kidding."

Bobby shakes his head. "The Ironsons still have just enough sense and sanity in 'em to have a happy ending, I guess. Which is something you only hold onto in this job by being damn lucky. Human beings got their limits, that's all there is to it."

"You're doing okay," Sam points out. "All things considered."

"Yeah, well _somebody_ has to keep it together and look after you two idgits," he says, getting a nudge from Sam's elbow and a lazy smile.

Sam and Dean stay up in the dark house playing a while longer after Bobby goes to bed, falling into a comfortable silence most of the time. It isn't until Sam gets up from his chair to go to bed that he feels the full effect of how tipsy he is, which isn't helped by the fact that he's already all thumbs and two left feet these days. He doesn't even notice himself swaying on his feet until Dean is at his side catching him with an arm around his waist.

"Woah, easy," he says with a light laugh.

He stood up and moved too fast, but now everything is going more still again. "I think I got it," he says, continuing forward. Dean lets go of him, but then he follows him kind of closely until he makes it to the couch.

"Where'd that other blanket go?" Sam says, looking around after he sits down and sees only one there.

Sitting down next to him, Dean observes how he's sitting kind of hunched in. "Don't tell me you're too cold again. Here it is," he says, spotting the extra blanket wadded up and kicked halfway under the sofa. He bends over to pick it up and tosses it in Sam's lap.

"It's not... _too_ cold, I guess, it's just...It feels weird. I think I'm cold and then I think I'm hot. _Temperature_ feels weird, Dean, my God, _what_ is my fucking life now?"

Dean shakes with a silent laugh and leans into his side, nudging him lightly. Sam looks to the side at his face and for a lingering moment, they just meet eyes contentedly, the moment in a strange kind of limbo. Sam lowers his gaze first, bends his head down, and lightly kisses Dean's shoulder.

Dean stays still where he is as he then pulls away, scooting a few feet down the length of the couch so he can put his legs up onto it. Once he has completely lied down with his legs stretched out behind Dean as far as they'll fit, he looks back up at his face. Dean's expression is completely frozen, making him look caught off guard and impassive at the same time, but not troubled. He only lets his eyes stay locked with Sam's for one more brief instant, though, before turning away biting his lip and then getting up, moving off like someone who was caught in the still distraction of a daydream and then just remembered himself.

After Sam curls up in one of the less awkward positions that are possible for him sleeping here, his face turned in toward the couch, he hears Dean going around the house turning off the last of the lights.

He closes his eyes, and there is the wall.

He imagines smoothing his hands along it and feeling the jagged yet lucid texture, the heat behind it coming through like the fire in a closed-up room making the door feel hot, feeling the thrumming vibration of a sound he can't hear, screaming maybe. He touches, he wonders, he wants to know, wants to reach that poor forgotten person in pain on the other side.

It's an exercise, just like counting sheep, just enough to soothe the itch a little and let himself relax. He touches but doesn't scratch.


	3. Chapter 3

When Dean gets up in the morning, he can hear that Sam is in the shower upstairs. There's a note in the kitchen from Bobby informing them where he went, how long he expects to be gone, and a message he should pass on to "that dipshit Rivera with a 'fuck you'" if he calls, which makes Dean smirk and shake his head while he looks in the fridge to get some eggs. It's looking to be a low-key kind of day.

After he gets something in his stomach, he finds a yawning Sam folding his blankets on the couch and putting them to the side with the pillow. Quiet and not completely awake, they only nod to each other in acknowledgement at first and then both take a seat on the couch after a while, lounging comfortably with their elbows rested on the back and their knees spread out.

"Bobby's still out?" Sam assumes.

Dean nods. He picks at a loose thread on the back of the couch, something tapping at his thoughts. "So Sam...How are you doing?"

He looks a little surprised by the question. "Haven't we kind of talked about this?"

"Sure, _kind of._ Look, I know you're obviously handling all of this considerably well, but still...Just because you promised me it'll be okay doesn't mean you're _okay,_ just like that. It doesn't mean you have to tell me everything's fine just so I won't be worried."

Sam thinks about it a moment, then shrugs. "So far there are good days and bad days. Yeah, sometimes it's really, really tempting to pay more attention to this thing in my mind and what I know is behind it than I know I should. I can just _feel_ that it's an obstruction and it's not supposed to be there, like a...It's like feeling a rock in my shoe and having to keep ignoring that it's there instead of trying to dig it out or even moving it or touching it, except it's a really big rock in my damn _head._ It seems to be worse at moments when my mind's idle, so I've come up with this whole thought process that kind of helps in those moments, but I'm already getting really sick of going through it again and again...Whatever works, though. I'll _make it_ work. I already beat the devil, didn't I? This is just another kind of wrestling match inside my noggin."

"Okay..." Dean doesn't necessarily seem unconvinced by anything Sam just said, but he's looking close at him as if trying to see something more, thinking he still hasn't hit the bottom. "What else?" he says, a little quiet now.

Sam looks away from his eyes, rubbing his hands together. So he isn't just asking about the 'W' word. There _is_ more, but Sam is pretty sure some of the other things still bothering him sometimes aren't anything Dean is ready for them to bring up, and the rest is just so hard to articulate he hardly knows where to start.

"Thing is...I, um..." Sam pats his palms down on his knees sort of uneasily. "I do have trouble sometimes, just with...being here. Almost like I'm just not supposed to be. I don't know if it's just the wall, or if that's just part of it, but so much of the time I feel really restless inside. But sometimes it's not so much an _anxious_ kind of restless as just a tired kind. Like...I've forgotten something really important, and compared to that thing nothing right here matters, but instead of feeling like I need to _do_ something, I feel like I need to...stop. As if doing anything at all is too much."

Not unexpectedly, hearing that makes Dean look a little disturbed, and surely only a little because of that concealing wall Dean's face can be whenever he wants. "I'm sure it'll be better when you can get out of this house," he says. "Get back to work and everything."

"I know, but even the idea of that...Just thinking about it makes me feel tired. Yeah, a good amount of the time I'm fine, and I feel good, and I feel like I _want_ to be doing that. Then sometimes later I wonder if I'm only happy at times because this still doesn't really feel real in a way. It doesn't quite feel like I'm really here _for good."_

Dean is just shaking his head slowly. There isn't really much to say; it's obvious what Sam is saying really means, and that Sam knows how crazy it is and really can't help it. "Why do you think you would feel that way? Why wouldn't you _want_ to be here?"

"I don't know. It's just that...everything from before I died is easy to remember, but it's almost like it's just an encyclopedia that other me still had. Like _I_ don't really remember anymore. Of course I _want_ to and everything in my life still means to me what it's supposed to mean, but something in me just knows that for me that was longer than a lifetime ago. There's an entire other existence separating me from my life, and having no memory of that time just means that I'm practically starting over from nothing. Which is really hard when I feel so worn-out, down to the core. In some way I know I'm not the same person I was before dying, and I feel _old._ I guess I just got used to the idea that you don't get second chances, never ones that are completely worth the cost, and...as hard as I'm trying, deep down, I'm not sure I know how to really believe in this. In having a second chance here."

Dean closes his eyes and rubs at his temple for a moment, sighing heavily. "Sam. You saved the whole human race by throwing yourself into Hell, and you feel like that's just the way it was meant to end? What the hell kind of an ending is that?"

"Come on, it's not like you've ever been one to buy the idea of any of the good we do coming back to us. That's never been the reason we do what we do. We've even been so lucky as to get a sneak peak of Heaven so we know for a fact we can look forward to it being a little lame."

"All true," Dean says dryly.

"Think about it—Yeah, we came through with stopping Lucifer, but then again we were the only ones who _could_ actually do anything. And maybe we've been important in a certain way to those in touch with Heaven and Hell's shit lists and prophecy and all. But do we _deserve_ to get brought back from the dead any more than the good ordinary people who die all the time? Sure, you're glad I'm back so it's easy for you to think about it positively, but no matter what this is still sort of messed up. It's not that I'm blaming you, man, I said it's okay. If you could have asked my opinion, I think I would have told you to make the same choice given such a crappy ultimatum, and as far as I'm concerned none of this is your fault. I just...well, you _asked,_ so..."

He nods with a grim, accepting look. "I did." He sighs again, looks to the side and directly meets his eyes. "Listen, I get it. But just because it's true that people don't necessarily get what's coming to them, and that may not be _why_ you're back, that doesn't mean you don't deserve the break. You know that, don't you?"

Sam goes silent for a long time. He rests his back against the couch again as something seems to sink in him. "I'm sure if I remembered Hell I'd appreciate the difference more," he starts slowly, "but life...It's tough to imagine anything harder than that. Jumping into the cage was terrifying and harder to do than I can even describe, but in a way it was also easy, after the things I'd done. Easier than any other means of redemption. Dying like a hero is one thing, but I can't help doubting if I can really be any kind of a hero anymore."

Dean shakes his head again, this time just with a look of disbelief. "Join the club, dickweed," he says. "Who _needs_ to be a hero anyway? Maybe there aren't any real ones. When you're saving the world all the time, seeing things that just hearing about would make most people's hair curl, you're bound to develop some issues, after all. Unless you're a soulless robot, basically. We've been through bigger shit than even most other hunters can imagine, so our screw-ups are bigger. But if you really believe we aren't special and important, you got to stop thinking like your mistakes are so important they can't even be forgiven and put behind you. And hey..." He nudges him with his elbow and sort of half-heartedly mumbles his next words, not like he doesn't mean it, just like it's so easy and obvious. "No matter what, you're _my_ fucking hero."

A slow, small smiles spreads across Sam's face. Then he just says with a light laugh, "Since when?"

"What does it matter?" Dean says nonchalantly, like he hasn't really given it much thought, as he gets up and heads back to the kitchen.

Sam stays sitting on the couch for a moment, suddenly nervous about something as he hears Dean starting to work on the dishes he just used to make himself breakfast. After considering it, he gets up and follows him into the kitchen, deciding to get this over with while the opportunity is as good as any.

"Uh. Dean." He leans back against the counter close to the sink, crossing his arms. "There's something else I have to talk to you about."

Seeing the serious look on his face, Dean turns off the running faucet. "Yeah?" he asks, drying his hands with a towel.

"I guess there's never going to be a good way to bring this up, but Bobby happened to mention something to me this morning about what you asked Castiel. About...what exactly it'll mean for me when I die now and everything?"

A deeply unsettled look gradually creeps into Dean's features as he sees where this might be going. "He heard some of that?" he just says. "Eavesdropping asshole..."

"Look, I'm sure everybody's been thinking it, even if we aren't bringing up the possibility. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have _asked_ him about that otherwise."

"That was before I knew how well you'd be dealing with this," Dean says, "so I could...not have to worry about _that_ part, at the very least. But thinking about you up in Heaven doesn't really do much for my worries now. Do we have to talk about this?"

"If you can't even _talk_ about it, how are you going to deal with it if you have to?"

"Jesus, Sam. You're going to be fine!"

"Man, you know so much better by now than to resort to that bullshit with me. Now I _told_ you I'm going to fight to get through this as hard as I can, but we don't even completely understand this wall thing and you know damn well I can't be completely sure what'll happen. I'm _sorry,_ okay, but you really need to suck it up and listen to me here because your assurance that it's all going to be fine isn't going to help me any if this ever does turn out bad."

Dean draws in a forced breath, nodding and making himself turn toward Sam. "You're right. Sorry. Old habits die hard. But I mean...what good is it really going to do for us to discuss the plan B here? Can't you just trust me to cross that bridge if we get there?"

"It's just that I know you, Dean. And not that you shouldn't get a lot of credit for some obvious improvement in the area during the year I was dead, but you don't really have the best record of being able to say when it's time to quit and move on. Bobby's kind of scared to think how you'd deal with it, too. He told me the gist he caught of what Cas said, and...he's right, you know. If I don't survive it could destroy you, one way or another, but _especially_ if you don't go about it right. If you end up just prolonging all of it, for one thing, so that you have to remember me that way. Desperately hanging onto whatever mess is left of me and trying to find any way to make me the least bit better before giving up, just putting off what has to be done, is only going to make it worse in the end. I'm thinking if there's a definite _plan_ just in case it'll kind of be easier, like—"

"No, I...I wouldn't let it get like that," Dean says uncomfortably. But there's a vague shadow of doubt on his face, like he's starting to wonder if he _does_ need to face the idea of this directly, and Sam knows he was right to bring this up. Whatever he wants to think he would do and what he would really do when faced with that situation and possibly too emotional to be reasoned with could be different things.

"I wouldn't be selfish like that, I'd take care of it," he finally finishes, almost like he's telling it to himself.

"No, Dean, that's what I'm trying to...I need you to promise me you won't," Sam says.

Dean could be knocked over with a feather. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out right away. It's obviously the last thing he expected to hear.

"Sam, it's okay," Dean finally manages to say. "If it comes to that, I can _do_ it."

"I don't _want_ you to. Not if it's _you,_ understand? I can't ask that."

"Am I supposed to just let you suffer?" Dean is talking louder, a faint outline of something almost like panic creeping into his eyes. "Or put it on Bobby or somebody else to do it like some sorry coward? Assuming Bobby's even still around by that time if it does happen. No, that wouldn't be _right,_ man."

"It wasn't right when Dad said you might have to, you said so yourself. Or when the angels kept trying to tell you it was your job to resolve the apocalypse by killing me. It was messed up, and it's still not right to expect that of you, and I don't _ever_ want it happening."

"This is completely different! This is something you do for someone if you really have to and you can put yourself aside enough to let go. I can handle it. You did the same thing for Madison, as hard as that was, didn't you?"

Sam is ready for that—it isn't like the memory hasn't crossed his mind already—though it lands on his ears sounding like an almost ridiculously weak comparison. He'd only known Madison for a couple days, had only just started loving her, and still having to kill her was so unbelievably difficult and painful that to him the thought of it only strengthens his point.

"Yes, I shot her," he says back easily, but slowly and with some delicacy, "because she was _scared,_ and it was the least I could do to help her and be there for her in her very last moments. If this thing breaks down, and it's as bad as we know it could be, there won't be anything in the world that will be of any significant comfort to me. If I'm practically like a lobotomized and excruciatingly injured animal that can't do anything for itself, it won't make any difference to _me_ how it happens."

"But it would have to be on _somebody_ to do it, and I'm the one who got us in this anyway. Maybe I was trying to make the best of a crap situation like you said, but still, I made the choice to get you back up here in your body when I _knew_ —"

"God dammit, Dean!" Sam says with sudden frustration. "You are not _responsible_ for me! Don't you get that?"

It finally seems to get through and hit something at the right spot. For a strange, very brief instant, it feels almost like they're talking about something completely different.

Dean looks away with a resigned sigh, his posture sinking a little. "Yeah," he says, his voice still a little unsteady. "Yeah, I _know._ But...it's not going to be any easier for Bobby, especially when he's already had to go through this with his wife, you know, _twice,_ and I just don't know—"

"No, not Bobby either," Sam agrees, shaking his head. "Cas."

Dean looks at him almost like he took it as a joke. "What? _Cas?_ Why _him?"_

"Why do you _think?"_ Sam's mouth curves in the slightest wry smile. "Because he's a cold and emotionless dick."

Dean returns the expression, if reluctantly, recognizing the hidden fondness in the words like they're actually a compliment in this context. "Give me a break," he says, starting to loosen up a little, "for an _angel_ he's a total softie and you know it."

"But he could do this and live with it. It wouldn't be asking too much of him. It could be neat, quick, painless. And it seems like God isn't ever going to let that poor bastard die for good, so he's a reliable contact who should still be around for quite a while."

Dean is starting to look a little like he doesn't entirely regret having to address all of this out loud. He runs a hand along the edge of the counter, knocks his knuckles on it once, and then stops avoiding eye contact with him. "Fine...You got it."

Sam gives a small nod. "Thanks."

Dean also nods and then turns to the sink again, getting back to the dishes.

"If things don't work out, I just...I want you to be able to move on again, Dean," Sam says, probably barely audible over the running water. "I don't want you to have to remember killing me. I want you to remember carrying out my wishes, kind of like I'm still there. 'Cause I will be. You know, _somewhere."_

Dean looks up at him as he rinses a glass. "Save me a seat at your lame Thanksgiving?" he asks, very light-heartedly, but softly.

He smiles. "That's not where I'll be."

Sam has no idea what his Heaven could be like come the next round, but that much he is able to say with no doubt. Some parts have surely become too non-essential to his soul for them to have been preserved all this time, and over the hundred years in the dark he doubts the meaning of that memory would have stuck nearly as stubbornly as other things.

Heaven is probably only so disappointing because of how limited the human imagination is, how shallow and insignificant most of the things people think they want are. Maybe he can choose not to think of his life as that special but still entertain the notion that his Heaven will be somewhat of a special one, a paradise for someone who can actually let go of life and all that makes it safely stable and familiar but also knows that nothing can really follow up the act. His little corner of Heaven should have a hell of a time making itself into something that can impress him.

 

The day after Sam's twentieth birthday, he was woken up by his cellphone ringing.

He stirred and pulled the blanket off of him, rubbing at one eye, then froze. He looked around the room and saw he was alone.

His phone was just within reach on the desk, and with an undefined lingering hope he leaned over to grab it. When he looked at the caller ID, he went still again, frowning. Making a quick decision, he flipped the phone open and put it to his ear, rubbing at his throbbing head.

"Hey, Jessica," he said.

They were still only friends at that time. Just about everyone who knew both Sam and Jess had started dropping giant hints that they would be great together, and he was fairly interested but didn't quite feel like he really knew her yet. He had never even spent any time alone with her, but this phone call would end up being the longest conversation they'd had at this point, the one he would look back on and see as the one that actually started everything.

"Hi, Sam," her voice answered brightly. "This is late and really lame, but happy birthday. I totally meant to call you yesterday since I couldn't make it to your thing, but things got kind of crazy at work and then I forgot about everything."

"Oh, thanks. And it's okay, we..." His voice trailed off for a moment as he saw his shoes sitting on the floor, set neatly together. He was pretty sure he hadn't kicked them off last night; they only could have been removed and then placed there that way. He cleared his throat. "We cancelled those plans anyway. I did something else."

There was a pause of silence. "Hey, are you okay?" she asked, like she heard something off in his voice.

He closed his eyes and held the phone away for a second so she wouldn't hear him taking a deep, slightly shaky breath. Then, "Yeah, fine. Long night, that's all."

She went quiet again for a moment, not convinced. "Sam, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. It's...stupid. Just family drama, you know..." It was as good a cover as any.

"Oh, I'm sorry. That sucks."

Of course she then asked if he wanted to talk about it, and he said no, that's okay, and instead asked what went so shitty at her job yesterday that it consumed so much of her day. They talked for over five minutes and then before letting her go, Sam said, "Listen, the guys said we could do dinner some other time since I cancelled on them, so you're still invited, if you want in."

"Yeah, definitely," she said easily. "You've got my number."

"Great. See you sometime soon then."

"Yeah. And I'm sorry your family ruined your birthday."

He let out an awkward laugh. "Oh, they didn't, I just kind of...ruined it for myself. Anyway...thanks for calling, Jess, it was really sweet of you."

"Sure. Bye, Sam."

And that was it. He didn't linger in the bed any longer after putting his phone back down, didn't stay still and think any more. He grabbed a change of clothes and went to go take a shower, thinking about what he would do today. He looked forward rather than back, thinking about Jessica and her sunny California smile and how maybe they'd do something else together after they got together with his small crowd of Stanford friends who weren't away for the summer, catch a late movie or something, just the two of them.

That was it, and then when he saw Dean again they never even spoke as if they'd ever seen each other during those four years. Still recovering from what happened to Jess for so long after they reconnected, Sam had no desires good or bad besides the need for revenge, and it was simple and uncomplicated. Brought together through all the horrific experiences that followed, he and Dean became brothers again, better ones than they'd ever been before. That was all they were anymore, and nothing happened. Nothing more.

Except he knows that isn't true.

There were the times people met them and assumed they were together, and they never acted like they took it seriously, but neither of them ever seemed to find it as funny as they should have been able to either. A common mistake that should have gotten more amusing the more it turned into a pattern, it was more like a bad joke they got sick of hearing again and again without even completely understanding the punchline.

There was the night he kept twisting and turning in bed and just couldn't get to sleep after over an hour, longer than Dean had even been in bed and judging by the slow pattern of his breathing he was already out. He felt close enough to tired that getting up to do anything would just get his body too active again and ruin it. It was his head that wasn't letting him relax, thinking too much about having both the law on their tail and apparently some hunters after him now and everything else that was always running through his thoughts lately.

After a while he let out a frustrated sigh, bringing an arm up under his head like a pillow and turning to the side, away from the direction of Dean's bed. He reached down into his boxers and started stroking himself idly, willing all his anxious thoughts to slip away, replaced with vague and lazily conjured images from his mental bank of stock material to get him off. It took a little while but soon enough he was getting really hard, losing himself in it in just the right way and breathing hard with his eyes closed.

Then he heard Dean shift slightly in his bed.

Sam opened his eyes and went still. He heard no more movement, but Dean's breathing now made it sound like he could be awake. _How long_ had he been awake?

Whatever, Sam knew it would hardly make this the only thing they were unusually laid-back about due to growing up rarely knowing the luxury of privacy. Even if Dean had woken up for a moment, he probably didn't care and was already close to drifting back off to sleep. As he half-lucidly reasoned with himself about it, he had already continued lightly palming his cock, trying to keep quiet. He started to tug with a quicker and firmer hand, all thought liquidating again, yeah, yeah...

Then came the start of Dean's ragged breathing in the other bed, joining his. A repeated soft rustle like the sound of skin brushing against cloth.

Oh fuck.

The sudden palpable heat in the room quickly covered them as a clouding, maddening force, and before long Sam could tell they were both going at it with no restraint. Of course he never moved and looked over at him, of course they never acknowledged each other, but as they lay in their separate beds not facing each other and pretended they didn't hear each other or maybe they did but it wasn't like that, it felt almost as if the separation was non-existent. Sam's ears sharply took in every sound coming from behind him that he could catch over his own heavy breathing and it was almost like touching. After a while Dean's soft gasps of breath got faster and he let out a low and helpless, quickly cut-off moan; Sam bit his lip with a kind of agonizing and forced containment, feeling his cock now starting to leak with precome, and then despite his efforts he followed somewhat closely with a similar sound dragging out of his throat as if in response.

He turned his head to bury his mouth into the pillow the rest of the time, breathing into it hotly, muffling the choked sound he made as he came in his fist. For a while he stayed frozen as he was, not even moving to take his hand from his pants, as if he were asleep and had never been awake before at all. It was terribly difficult to force his head blank again with Dean shaking hard enough he could hear his bed twitching, with the way Sam heard his breath hold for a split second with a barely audible wince in his throat as he came and then fall out heavily. To calm down and finally fall asleep he told himself he would be able to forget all about this in the morning, and he did.

There was also the time they were stuck in northern Pennsylvania for over two weeks because they kept running into dead ends with their current investigation, and Dean kept saying they might be wrong about there being anything unusual going on here and maybe they should just take it easy and stop for a while. This was shortly after they'd resolved that case at the haunted motel where they saved the little girl, and Sam was burying himself in their work as restlessly as ever. Dean kept bringing up in ways he must have thought were subtle how they were such a short drive away from crossing into New York, as if he imagined finally going to see Sarah again might be what he needed to lighten up a little.

Mostly just to shut Dean up, he eventually agreed to take a break from working on the case for a night and go to a movie. He was so tired from spending most of the previous night doing research that he fell asleep in the middle of it. During the credits he was nudged awake with his head sagged against Dean's shoulder. The potent, easily recognizable smell of Dean's jacket made him jerk into movement, sitting up.

"My arm's been asleep for a good half hour, dude," Dean complained. His tone was cool and apathetic as usual, but there was something uncomfortable in his expression that turned Sam's throat dry.

"Why didn't you wake me up sooner?" he asked.

"You obviously needed the sleep," he said. "You so owe me one for this, though. People were staring."

"In a dark theatre?" he asked, more confused than doubtful.

That look came into his eyes again, and he seemed to regret saying that, like it gave something away. "You were kind of...murmuring a little," he said. "For a few seconds."

Well, great.

Sam got up without saying anything else about it except a curt "Sorry." No way did he even want to know what he might have said if it was anything coherent.

While they were walking back to the car, Dean let out a quiet sigh like all his worries were coming together at once. "Look, I'm not saying things aren't really screwed up right now, and maybe you're right that we're not going to be able to just run away from this life now that it's getting harder," he said. "But I don't think it's good for you to be completely losing touch with the normal world. If you're actually scared about turning evil somehow, as crazy as I think that is, then do you really think _that's_ what's going to help you?"

"So what do you think I should do, Dean?" Sam asked with a shrug, stopping where they were in the parking lot to turn to him. "Go see the Grand Canyon? Go get laid? See Sarah again so I can just end up bringing her down with me, too?"

"You thinking that way is exactly what she didn't want! It would be good for to spend your time with _somebody_ other than me, doing something besides this job. I get that it's easier for you to just concentrate on hunting, but you're working yourself so hard I don't even feel as easy about you going into anything dangerous in the kind of shape you're in."

"Thanks, Dean," Sam said sarcastically. "I know what's good for me."

There was a brief silence between them as Sam turned to start walking again and Dean followed. Then he heard Dean mutter darkly under his breath, "Obviously not."

He whipped back around and his fist was flying toward Dean's face before he even realized he was that angry. But it seemed Dean had a point about his capability in his current overloaded and sleep-deprived condition; Dean only saw it coming and acted fast, catching his hand in an iron grip and swiftly striking back. His equally furious but more precisely landed punch hit Sam so hard he was knocked off his feet.

After he toppled to the ground and clutched the throbbing side of his face, he sat up breathing heavily and avoided looking up at Dean's face because he was so enraged and didn't think he could even control himself if he did. It felt like this had been some kind of quick challenge and fight for dominance and Dean had won, and that was just not fucking fair, but Dean was standing there rigid and prepared for him to get up and try again and he knew it was no use.

A few teenagers walking close by had stopped and were staring at them, murmuring to each other. He and Dean both glanced over at them awkwardly, and once they'd been noticed they looked back away and walked on. The outside distraction seemed to take them both out of the former moment, and when Sam finally looked up at Dean they were both calm, like they suddenly didn't really understand what had gotten into them and were too mentally exhausted to care. Without a word, Dean held out a hand to help him up off the ground, and then didn't even look at him again for at least the next twenty minutes.

Then there was all the time Dean was dead. The months he was left alone with all those pointless but unavoidable, pricking thoughts of everything that would never happen now. When after a while he learned to think of nothing at all whenever he jerked off in the shower, because although he could still feel some distant primal frustration and that was at least simpler to deal with than other things, it was like there was nothing in him anymore, nothing left in this world that could really touch him. It was always a numb experience, an ugly distraction from deeper and sharper feeling. But then once by the time he came, leaning his head against his forearm that was braced against the shower wall, he realized only then without having any idea why that he was sobbing through it. It had crept up on him while he thought his mind was far away from anything threatening, escalated unstoppably while he was still off his guard, and then as he stayed half-collapsed against the wall like that he couldn't stop. It was almost a couple months since Dean had died then, and this was the most he had cried yet in all that time.

And he did know why, though he desperately didn't want to. He didn't want to understand it only now, but loss is just such a son of a bitch that way, merciless in what it painfully brings to light too late by overwhelming the bereaved with the sense of this person who is gone. The idea of loving _too much_ or in any kind of shameful way becomes absolutely ridiculous and impossible, incomprehensible like some very grown-up concept is to a child, at least for a time while the pain still hasn't become manageable yet. Sam was hardly unfamiliar with grief and he knew all that, yet there were times he was honestly afraid that it was never going to be manageable, not this one, that it should be getting a little easier by now but it just wasn't.

Maybe he gave into Ruby so easily because he was finally resigned to the knowledge of how fucked up he was and figured he couldn't be much worse for it. Part of him maybe wondered if it would feel anything like the wrongness of fucking his own brother, fucking a demon, and he sank into her like he was trying to dig away at his own core by peeking into the nature of utter evil. But of course it didn't truly bring him any closer to her and he was only left with a sense of the complete emptiness of her, as if she was such an immaterial void inside he could hardly even sully his own surface by touching her. Still nothing could touch or reach him anymore, and nothing he ate had any taste and every song on the radio sounded the same, until Dean would show up again at the door of his motel room one day good as new.

A lot has changed since then, and all those things are now the least of his crimes. All Sam's experiences and mistakes have only proven now that he is worse without him than with him, even if it might appear to others that they aren't necessarily _happier_ with each other and they may just see it as something claustrophobic and growth-inhibiting and too intense, and they might not be entirely wrong. But he and Dean have gone all these years ignoring this hidden thing between them and it hasn't made their relationship any less of a tumultuous, insane, and gut-wrenching component of his life, and he's pretty sure nothing they do can ever truly change it. Rarely has anything else about his life ever been good for him anyway, but he can't quite regret that life as a whole. He was mostly thrown into everything in ways beyond his control, and now it's all just part of who he is, useless to complain about or fight against anymore.

Still there are lines that maybe can't be crossed, there are things like the wall that he has to accept will always be there in him and learn to live with without letting them destroy him, and not just because of Dean. Dean has always aggressively fought this, sometimes closed himself off from Sam in ways that could be practically cruel compared to any simple rejection, but of course it was never only him. Sam may have learned at some point not to feel so bad about wanting these things he shouldn't, but it isn't like he's ever been sure he could ever actually go there. Now that he knows too well that he can never be totally certain about trusting himself, the idea is possibly scarier than ever. There is no controlling this thing, no navigating it, predicting it, or ever understanding it.

 

Later in the afternoon, Dean is leaving his phone to charge on the kitchen table and then he almost walks right into Castiel as soon as he turns around.

He jerks in surprise and then gives him a lightly annoyed look. "I'm just gonna have to get used to this someday, aren't I?" he says.

Not replying right away, Castiel looks up toward the ceiling somewhat meaningfully, probably able to tell that Sam is upstairs right now. "How is it?" he asks bracingly.

"You mean how's _he?"_ he asks. "Okay. Generally. If you just came by to see how he's getting along, go ask him yourself."

"I do need to see him. If he'll agree to let me attempt it, there's something I might be able to do to help him."

"Right..." Castiel mentioned something of the sort before taking off last time, but it still doesn't make any more sense to him. "Something that could actually work? What happened to 'I can't do anything to make him better'?"

"I _can't_ do anything to repair the damage to his soul, no. Now that he has that wall in place in his mind, the most that can help him now is his own willpower to keep himself stable. A lot of good luck, too, I'm sure. Which is what made me think of this...I don't even know if it will do him any good with this kind of problem, but I can try..."

"What is it?" Dean asks.

"I'm going to bless him."

His brow shoots up. "Say what?"

"I'm going to mark him," Castiel says, as if assuming Dean just doesn't know what the word means and merely supplying another. Still getting a blank stare, he elaborates, "With a sigil. Of blessing."

"Yeah, I know what you _meant,"_ he says, then goes silent a second. "Okay. Actually, no. I have no idea what that means."

"Angels are agents of fate," he explains more helpfully. "Sometimes by blessing someone, we can influence fate in minor ways to make it work out a little more in that person's favor."

Dean crosses his arms, only able to stare at him in some disbelief for a second. "Are you kidding me? You've always had _this_ kind of trick up your sleeve and you only care to tell me now? Don't you think there've been a few other times we could have used some blessings here and there if it would have given us even the slightest better chance?"

"The specific circumstances have never made it an option before. Blessings are very uncommon because they can't just be dealt out lightly. In fact, besides the kind that are carried out by cherubs by orders of Heaven, they're generally obsolete and unheard-of in this age. That is why I needed to find and consult an elder angel to confirm that I even knew how to do it right before coming back here...and was laughed at a little for asking him about it and being preoccupied with such a thing during a time of war, no less."

Dean rolls his eyes a little, more out of weariness than annoyance, and asks, "You mean you've never even done this before?"

"I don't even _know_ more than two angels who have ever marked anyone. As I said, it's only applicable with certain conditions in place. The kind of blessing I'm going to give Sam can only be bestowed on one who has endured profound suffering in service to God and his neighbors."

"...Oh." Dean wraps his head around that in silence for a moment. "Well...yeah, I guess that _would_ only apply here. What exactly is it going to do, though?"

"Heal him, at least to an extent. Protect him. When it's important and it's possible, though not necessarily in ways that will be obvious and perceptible. And it just might be able to lessen the likelihood of that wall in his mind failing."

"So can you even tell me a success rate here? Is this going to work any more than letting him pop a placebo and wishing him the best?"

He starts to recognize some impatience in Castiel's subtle but telling expression. "This is not something you can determine the success or failure of based on a single factor, or which is meant to be used as a solution for a single problem," he says. "Dean, the most important thing this can do for him is help give him peace. If he can be relieved of some of the weight of his burdens and made able to move on from his past a little more easily, we can only hope it will make him less inclined to scratch at that barrier that's holding him together and burying most of his baggage."

Dean thinks about it another moment, then sighs. "Okay, then," he says. "Don't know what you're waiting for."

They find Sam up in the small cramped sitting room that Bobby uses mostly for storage of files and other miscellany. He's sitting in an armchair with his laptop on the end table by it, scrolling through what looks like some news articles, until he sees them come in and shuts it.

"Cas! Hey," he greets him with surprise as they come forward, Dean taking the only other seat in the room.

"Sam," Castiel says, looking closely at him. "I'm relieved to see you well and returned to normal." Seemingly struggling to express as much without sounding too accusatory or offending, he says awkwardly, "Without a soul you were quite...practical, ruthless, impossible to intimidate, and cunningly methodical."

Sam can't help but slowly smile just a bit. "I must have gotten along great with you, then," he says, lightly mocking.

"One would think...Then you threatened to hunt me down and kill me and I decided the style really didn't work as well for you."

Discreetly catching Sam's eye for a moment, Dean mouths the words "Yeah, he missed you" and winks. Sam shakes his head, now with a full and warm grin of amusement.

"Been a while since you last dropped in and said you'd be back," Sam says. "How are things going upstairs?"

Castiel bears the look of someone who doesn't want to spoil his brief vacation by thinking about work. "Never mind," he says simply.

"He's here to do something for you, Sam," Dean says.

Sam looks over at him again, then back up at Castiel with obvious uncertainty. "Am I gonna have to chew on your belt again?" he asks a little uneasily.

Castiel raises a curious eyebrow. "You remember that, do you?"

"Yeah," Sam says, and Dean doesn't like the way he shuffles one foot across the carpet sort of anxiously as he says it with his eyes lowering briefly. "Some things—something like _that,_ especially—are stuck pretty firmly in the hard drive."

"Well, this won't be painful. Not like _that,_ I mean—more like when I put those carvings in your ribs to hide you. A part of it involves marking your skull that way."

Sam's eyes widen for a second in confusion. "And _what's_ this going to do?"

As Castiel explains what he intends to do and what it will mean for him, Dean gets up to stand closer to them near Castiel's side. The more Sam hears, the more he gradually starts to look a little doubtful.

"And...you really think that'll work?" he asks. "For _me?"_

Castiel tilts his head just slightly. "You have just spent well over a lifetime in the cage after willingly damning yourself to Hell in order to take Lucifer down with you and save the world from destruction."

"Yeah, but...'profound suffering'?" He echoes the words unsurely, almost like he thinks Cas must be kidding. "I don't even _remember_ anything I went through since trapping Lucifer. And I was the one who let him get out in the first place, so I figure it was kind of just serving my time anyway. And how can we even be sure anymore what was and wasn't God's will all along?"

"Serving your time?" Dean says back to him, starting to get a little pissed. "For over a _year_ down there? Man, do you _want_ to remember it?"

"No, of course I don't!" Sam says.

"Then quit talking like you _belonged_ down there or something. See, _this_ is why—" He cuts off in frustration, just shaking his head for a second. "I don't want to hear that crap, it's not going to help you any now that you're in this—this _condition."_

"Okay, sorry. I'm just saying if I've done such important work for God that I deserve some kind of _blessing,_ why did he bring back Castiel when it was all over and not even me? It's a reasonable enough question."

"Why does it matter? Yeah, you fucked up, and then you did real good, and now it's _over_ , okay? Whatever happened to you in the cage, _it's_ over. And you got to start thinking that way."

Sam sighs. "Yeah. I know."

"Sam, it may be that I was only brought back because my work wasn't done," Castiel says. "Yours evidently was. And consider that the worst Adam is guilty of is getting bullied into saying yes to Michael, but it seems he's still left to rot down there forever. I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase 'The Lord helps those who help themselves.'"

He shrugs. "Yeah..."

"So just humor me for a minute and _shut up_ and let me bless you. I have far more important matters to get back to as soon as I take care of this."

Sam lets out another sigh. "Alright," he says. "What do I have to do?"

"Just sit there, for the most part. It's a fairly simple and brief process. But there's something I must do first as part of it that I need your permission for. It could probably feel quite strange, and as a human you might find the idea of it disagreeable. Before I can bless you, you'll have to bare your soul to me."

His eyes go a little wide again at the sound of that. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means I will know everything about you. I don't need to _touch_ your soul again, just be allowed a certain kind of access. I have to peer far inside you and examine every facet of it, all your experiences and actions, everything you've ever felt and thought, like opening up a book of your entire existence." As Sam starts showing some obvious trepidation at hearing this, he adds as if to lighten the demand, "It will be more unpleasant for me than for you."

"Gee, thanks," Sam says with an empty laugh, taking some insult.

"Only because of the intensity of the human emotions and sensations in the information I'll have to be taking in all at once," he elaborates as if to amend the way it sounded, while looking vaguely irritated by the comment at the same time. "I won't be able to completely understand and _feel_ any of it because I'm not human, but for that very reason it will probably be somewhat overwhelming to process. You'll hardly feel anything, though, except perhaps a strong and somewhat uncomfortable sense of being very exposed."

Sam's eyes have raised to meet Dean's with uncertainty. Dean just nods his head at him slowly in some silent concession, and Sam looks back over at Cas biting his lip nervously. "I don't know..."

"Sam," Dean says quietly, while Castiel just looks slightly bemused by Sam's hesitation which clearly has some hidden but quite specific and deeply uncomfortable reasons. "Come on, it's okay."

After tapping his foot in tense silence for another moment, Sam finally gives a tiny nod. "Fuck," he mutters. "Well. Here goes nothing...You have to tell me something really embarrassing about you afterwards to make this fair, though, okay?" he says to Castiel, still sounding pretty uneasy but trying to lighten up a little.

"Right...You'll have to let me think on that," he replies dryly as he comes closer.

Dean suddenly feels strangely uncomfortable and invasive staying too close while this happens; he steps back a little to the middle of the room and watches standing there, arms crossed and his whole stance rigid and tight.

Castiel brings the tips of two joined fingers up to Sam's temple with his right hand, then touches the same place on the other side of his face the same way with the other hand. In a strong and steady voice, he starts saying a string of elaborate-sounding phrases in Enochian. At first it doesn't appear that anything is happening, but then after a while it seems that some strange and intense sensation starts coming over Sam. He closes his eyes, the features of his face tightening tensely, and his head starts dropping slightly like he's starting to feel weak.

"Try to stay still," Castiel mutters to him quickly before slipping back into the incantation, and with forced effort Sam sits up straight and still.

Then Castiel's words stop. That's when Dean sees that some kind of faint glow is starting to emanate from him. At the angle where Dean is standing, he can barely see enough of the side of his face to tell, but there is a white light shining through his barely-open eyes and seeping through the line of his closed mouth, showing everywhere else as a much weaker reddish glow through his skin. It's the way he's seen angels give off light when they're close to being exorcised from their vessels, except not as intense.

Meanwhile Sam has started breathing unevenly, his eyes still closed, and there's something about him now that looks so unusual, so indecently vulnerable and open. He has drawn his arms in, almost practically hugging them around himself, and seems to be struggling even more now to stay still and not shrink inwards self-protectively.

Knowing all that's happening, Dean suddenly can't watch so closely. He nervously raises a fist up to rest over his mouth, turning slightly away. This really better fucking work...

After the momentous silence has been drawn out for about half a minute, the gentle light filling the room abruptly dies away and Castiel lets go of Sam's head. Sam gives a heavy release of breath, immediately relaxing as he feels the connection cut off. He nearly falls back against the chair as if Castiel's light touch was actually supporting him, and Castiel rests his hands on his shoulders to steady him through the aftershock.

Now Dean is practically transfixed by it, watching with the fullest attention. Still holding onto him firmly, Castiel utters a last brief incantation, and then brings his head down to place a light kiss on Sam's forehead. It is a quick and weak movement but impossible to miss, the way Sam closes his eyes and flinches away from him at first so that Castiel has to hold him in place tighter again, uncomfortably resisting the expression of such complete absolution in a knee-jerk reaction that he didn't even seem to intend. Immediately following it, Castiel brings his right hand back up and places his palm over the same place in the middle of Sam's forehead. He touches him like this only for a split-second and then Sam's face promptly twists into a look of pain and he groans softly at the quick sensation. He sinks into a slouch, dropping his head into his hand to rub at it there where Cas evidently just carved the sigil into the bone.

Dean takes it that means the thing worked.

They all just look at each other not too directly for a while, nobody seeming to know what to say. In more than one way, things suddenly feel much too intimate in the small room where so much just took place.

Castiel surprises Dean a little when he is the one to finally say something again. "Back when Anna was my superior, I looked up to her a great deal," he starts, getting an alarmed and slightly confused look from both the others. "I was as close to her as I've ever been to any other angels and felt I learned a lot from her. It was very troubling for me when she fell. I not only lost her influence and guidance but was left to doubt all of it, as she had failed in a way that defied everything I believed in.

"I had a relationship like that with Balthazar once as well. He wasn't above me in rank, but I looked up to him in much the same way I did her and counted on him as someone who always seemed to know what to do. It was just as upsetting losing him when I was led to believe he'd perished in battle. And then I found _you_ instead." He looks over at Dean for a second. "Someone else with the right idea who I could believe in and follow. If I didn't handle it well when you started to waver from your purpose and were so close to giving up once, it was mostly because I felt so lost on my own and needed to depend on you to tell me what the hell we were doing. Even when I rebelled, it seems I still had difficulty a lot of the time taking any kind of charge and truly thinking for myself. I don't think I am very strong in that way, as a _leader_ is meant to be, and I think that's why I'm doing such a miserable job so far of fighting this war and getting anyone on the opposition to listen and join me...I believe that counts as the sort of thing I would feel embarrassed about if I had the human kind of capacity to."

Dean watches Sam raising his eyebrows, both of them obviously very taken aback, and then both their faces slowly crack into small grins.

"Okay," Sam says awkwardly with a slow nod. "That...that works."

When they hear some footsteps on the stairs down the hall and Bobby calling for them, Sam grabs his shoes from where he kicked them off on the floor earlier and stays in the chair putting them on. Dean leaves the room and is followed by Cas a moment later.

"Hey," he calls over to Bobby when he sees him reach the top of the stairs carrying a load of laundry.

Bobby freezes for a second when he notices Castiel behind him and then they nod to each other in greeting. As Bobby turns to go throw the basket down in his bedroom, Dean faces Castiel, scratching at the back of his head anxiously. This is possibly the weirdest and most completely unpredictable social moment of his life, and he can't begin to think of what to say.

Finally he gets himself to look directly at his face and just says quietly, "Cas. Thanks."

Castiel seems to be considering something in deep thought, his expression completely indifferent and impossible to read. Then he only nods in response.

"Look, do you...?" Dean throws his arms up at his sides for a second, not at all used to being the one to try to initiate this kind of thing. "You need to _talk_ about anything? You should just know...you don't need to be asked in order to drop something on us like you just admitted to back th—"

"No. Uh...No." Castiel shifts his feet around, his eyes avoiding Dean's. "I think I'm good now."

Dean puts his hands in his pockets, nodding. "Good. Yeah." Something occurs to him for the first time then and he looks back up at him, speaking more seriously. "I guess...you must have seen everything that's behind the wall just now, huh?"

Castiel stares off into the air with a dark look while Dean just waits. For just a moment he can hope for Castiel to be able to tell him something surprising, that what Sam's been through isn't much too horrific for Castiel to even articulate and not every bit as bad as they have all the reason to fear.

But when Cas meets his eyes he only shakes his head with a heavy look of regret, and it's the only response needed.

Sam comes out then with his shoes back on and his laptop put away in its bag over his shoulder. His eyes look very bright and severe somehow, like he's just been through some great emotional upheaval all in the course of a minute or two. After Dean glances over at him for just an instant, he finds Castiel gone. Mouth twitching up in a wry smile for a second like he isn't even surprised, Sam just walks past Dean to go downstairs.

When Dean follows, Bobby is coming back out from his room and meets him at the top of the stairs. A quick glance around obviously tells Bobby that Castiel already left. "What'd I miss?"

 

That night Dean and Sam drive out to an open field and throw bottles high up in the air to shoot at them for moving target practice. Sam's aim isn't bad at all considering how out of practice half of him is; through the first few tries, he actually does better than Dean.

As they walk around gathering up the bottles from the ground that they missed so far, Sam asks him, "Dean...how have _you_ been doing anyway?"

Dean looks at him in a somewhat caught off guard way. He seems to actually have to think about it a moment and then says, "It's not often I get to say this and actually mean it, but...I'm _good,_ I guess. Things are definitely better than they've been for a while, right? For now..."

Sam spots one of the bottles and leans over to grab it from the ground, biting his lip. "I know you'll probably tell me it's stupid to feel responsible for this, but I really am sorry that everything got messed up for you with Lisa and Ben."

The direct mention of them seizes Dean into a couple seconds of silence before he nods solemnly. "I know."

"It's just...all those things you said to Veritas about how you know you can't really be that person. You know that's bullshit, don't you?"

"Well, it was _Veritas,_ Sam, does that answer your question?" he says dryly. "I don't know, we had _just_ pretty much ended it, I was in a bad place...But it's easier now. No matter how much you want to think _you_ ruined everything, I had a choice all along and I know now I don't regret choosing this. There was a point I could have turned back and gone home if I really believed it was over and there'd be no more danger of getting dragged back into my old life. But I just can't have it both ways, you know. I can't ask them to wait for a day when I can be there all the time when I don't even know when or if that'll happen, so...It kills me that I let them down so much, but letting them _keep_ getting disappointed would just be worse."

Sam nods. "I know. I just hope you realize it's not that you _couldn't,_ if things were different. We always have a streak of bad luck with being able to stay out of trouble, it's nothing wrong with _you."_

Dean gives him a weary half-smile as they make it back by the car and set down the couple bottles they just retrieved. "Come on, though. You know that's too easy."

"Okay, yeah, maybe a little," Sam admits, looking like he's having trouble explaining what he really means. Then he starts avoiding Dean's eyes, some troubled tension taking over what he can still see of his face. "I just hope it isn't all because..." His voice drifts off into an especially empty-feeling silence before he just shakes his head in a very small motion.

"What?" Dean asks softly.

He suddenly finds the need to check how many rounds are left in his gun, busying his hands stripping it with his head pointed down. "Never mind."

When they're headed back to Bobby's later, Dean keeps seeing Sam idly touch the center of his forehead whenever he catches a glance at him in the passenger seat. It makes it look kind of like he has a headache, but Dean knows he's just thinking about the sigil that's there carved in his skull.

"Do you feel different?" Dean asks him, his tone light and somewhat doubtful.

Sure enough, Sam shakes his head. "No, not exactly. Just recovering from a serious mindfuck."

"How bad was it?"

Sam seems to have to reflect on it a moment. "It didn't feel bad, I guess," he answers. "Not really. Just intense and all kinds of weird."

"Huh. You looked really uncomfortable during most of it."

"Did I really?" He sounds genuinely surprised to hear it. "It did feel really _invasive_ like he said it would. Like all these barriers I didn't even know I always have up were disabled for a while. But it was just a way I'm not used to feeling at all, not exactly in a bad way...I don't even _know_ how to describe it."

They sit in silence for a while after that, the music texturing the air at a low volume. Dean notices Sam restlessly shifting around in his seat a few times and something about his demeanor speaks of something unresolved and agitated in him. He isn't surprised when he eventually breaks the silence again with "Dean, I need to tell you something."

He looks to the side for a second to see Sam's nervous eyes, then focuses back on the road with a bad feeling sinking into his stomach. He doesn't reply, but he's listening.

"I haven't been totally honest about how much I remember," Sam says slowly. "I know I've made it sound like I can only see bits and pieces of what happened to me when I didn't have my soul. But it's more like...how you're never _always_ thinking about every single thing that's happened in the past year, you know, but you still have a general recollection of it all that you draw from. So it kind of felt at first like I didn't have a clear picture of everything, but more details keep coming back whenever something that should remind me of them causes me to make a connection, or when I just try to think back on specific things in depth..."

Dean gives a slow nod. "Right," he says, almost in a whisper.

"So...nothing is actually _buried_ , you understand," Sam continues, now very quietly and sounding more and more hesitant. "It may be kind of a confusing mess, but it's more like I pretty much...remember everything."

He draws in a very slow, tight breath as this slowly sinks in. It's not like he didn't already suspect it was this bad. The way Sam looked at him for a moment in the panic room right after he was returned to his body...He knew this already, deep down. But it doesn't make it any easier to hear Sam more or less admitting it now, sounding like he can't stand to just ignore it any longer.

There is absolutely no way to respond to this and he's not sure Sam is even waiting for him to say anything. It's not like there's any way for him to explain himself here, if that were actually what Sam expected. He just lets out a miserable, heavy, silent sigh that sinks his shoulders down and shakes his head again as he keeps staring ahead at the road in the dark.

Sam is no longer looking up at him. Out of the corner of his eye Dean can see him restlessly fidgeting one hand over his knee, and then he says gently, "We can talk about this, you know. I'm not going to freak out." He waits another couple seconds of silence and adds, "I mean...I already would have."

Giving another frustrated sigh, Dean finally looks over at him briefly. "What is there to talk about?" he asks him, in more of a hopeless than angry way. When Sam just looks down again, he says, "Seriously, Sam. What the fuck can I _possibly_ say?"

Of course Sam has no answer to that. Staring ahead and trying to see nothing but the road, not certain images that Sam also has stored in his head from a different point of view, he suddenly feels about as sick and dizzyingly lost as he did all of that night after it happened. One of his hands sinks down from the steering wheel and lands heavily on his knee. _"Shit,"_ he breathes in a sad whisper. "I'm sorry."

Sam is looking out the window now, a still shape in the corner of Dean's eye. His voice quietly sneaks out carrying the same heavy tone of regret. "Me, too."

 

Meg had gotten away after they toasted Crowley, and then Sam had just walked away from him, and Dean was trying to start coming to grips with the fact that if Sam completely rejected this idea that they needed to get his soul back then there might not be anything more he could do for him. He was trying to tell himself he wasn't in charge of him, even if Sam was incomplete in a way that meant he couldn't even really help his own choices and was like an animal that didn't know any better and needed looking after. It seemed it was out of his hands now, and meanwhile he knew his _own_ life might not yet be unsalvageable if he could tear himself away from all this long enough to look back.

So after getting back to his motel room alone and feeling so left adrift he could only pace around restlessly for the first few minutes, he called Lisa. He didn't even know what he could tell her now. If he said she'd been right about everything and he honestly regretted now that his brother had ever come back into his life again, that would just sound scary, she would never buy it. There was no answer anyway. It was better that way, putting it in her hands. She would see that he'd tried to reach her, and no message would mean there was no emergency, just an effort he was making to still try and do _something_ which she could choose what to do with. She could call or not call.

When he'd promised Sam the things he did before they went through with their plan to screw Lucifer, neither of them could have known what would be in the cards later. They'd thought fate would have to finally be done with them once the world was saved. No matter how things turned out now, Dean would at least know he'd tried, as much as he could.

He went out for a while because he needed to get toothpaste and do some laundry and put his mind on something simple for just one night. When he got back to the motel room, Sam was there. He was sitting at the table with all the lights off except one lamp, like he was just waiting.

Standing in the doorway, Dean flipped the light switch and stared at him a moment. As he shut the door behind him and walked on in, he said distantly, "Assuming you're just here to get your stuff, don't—"

"I'm not," Sam interrupted.

He stopped and looked over at him again. "What?"

He shrugged. "I was going to split, but then I figured what's the point? So I'm not down with your plan to get my soul back. Big deal. It's not like you've got a good chance of pulling it off or could _make_ me go along with it anyway. At least I'd like to see you try."

Getting into his duffel bag, Dean shook his head. "Right. We can just...be _fine_ now, huh?"

"You really don't have a good grasp of how I see things, Dean. Maybe I don't care about anyone, but I can still prefer working with certain people as opposed to others. I know it's just plain stupid choosing to do anything on your own when you have other resources available. All things considered, you're a good hunter, and we don't make a bad team."

As he finished speaking, Sam got up and headed for the bathroom, not seeming to expect any kind of reply. Dean certainly didn't feel like bothering with one. He was just completely tired of dealing with him for now, couldn't manage to care or think much about this new development rather than just go along with it.

While Sam showered, he took off his jacket, shoes, and socks and got comfortable on his bed, keeping himself occupied working on a crossword puzzle in a week-old newspaper he still had around. (Starting and never finishing crosswords was one of the habits he'd unthinkably picked up during his year of stand-still white picket fence life; he sucked at them, but not quite as much as he would have expected.) Sam came out a while later, hair wet and slick, having changed back into nothing but his pants.

Dean was looking up momentarily with his mind wandering as Sam went over to the dresser where he'd set his bag to put the rest of his clothes away in it. He could see Sam's reflection in the mirror hung above the dresser, and somehow the tattoo on his chest caught his eye and made him stare a while.

He and Sam had gotten those tattoos for an important practical purpose, of course, and never would have wanted them otherwise. But when they discussed the idea years ago, it had seemed there was an unspoken understanding that as long as it was getting completely necessary to do it, they might as well make the most of it and let the things sort of mean something, too. It wasn't a long and difficult process or anything because neither of them was very picky about it, but that was why they'd made a point of coming up with a design they wouldn't entirely mind having on their bodies and threw out one or two possibilities until they actually agreed on one as well as where they would both get them. It was like it simply never occurred to them after the idea was brought up that they wouldn't want them to match.

It was disturbing and wrong somehow to see the tattoo now on this incomplete Sam's skin, reduced to nothing but its practicality on that body that was empty inside.

"Thought you weren't looking," Sam said tonelessly. He was looking at Dean's reflection in the mirror, obviously having caught his eyes on him.

Dean didn't bother getting too defensive or looking at him like he was crazy, even though Sam was actually _definitely_ wrong and misreading the signals this time around. He didn't see any point. He just replied, "Not now, for Christ sakes."

"Oh, come on, Dean," Sam said, turning around and leaning back against the dresser, so at ease as usual. "What use do you think there still is in denying it? You've been thinking about it more lately than ever before, haven't you?"

"I know what you're doing, asshole," he said. He threw his paper to the side and swung his legs over the edge of the bed to sit up so that he could let his side face Sam instead.

"Well yeah, I'm not exactly trying to be coy, am I?"

"It's not as cute as you think it is. I know you've got some disadvantages in the area, but learn to take a hint. _Back off."_

Sam effortlessly ignored that, fixing him with a piercing gaze and going on. "You _have_ been looking. 'Cause you can't help it. There's no reason not to."

"No reason not to kick your ass and shut you up right now," he muttered.

"So why don't you?" Sam asked, mocking and taunting. "Is it because it's actually kind of a relief being able to finally just hear it like this, out in the open like it's no big deal, instead of keeping it all buried inside? My God, I bet you can't imagine what it's like in here." He pointed up to his head. "No denial or wishful thinking or embarrassment. Just straightforward information without the complications. I'm sure everyone's got all kinds of crap jumbled up in their heads that they'd be able to sort out so easily without their soul holding them back from looking at it objectively. It's just all so _obvious_ , everything Sam was always trying to forget about or making excuses to himself for like it didn't really mean anything."

Dean stayed stubbornly still as if he wasn't even listening, like Sam might shut up if he didn't honor any of this with a reply. Sam slowly started walking closer to him as he just went on meticulously picking away at him.

"But he was never the one who was fighting it the hardest, was he?" he said, his voice now deep and quiet. "Sammy, _he_ didn't really have to care so much after a while because it was clear how determined and resolute you were about never letting it happen anyway. After a while it just kind of made him sad, watching you and understanding..." He sat on the other bed opposite from him, directly facing him and leaning inward as he spoke a little more quietly and Dean stubbornly avoided his eyes. "Poor Dean, always struggling. Always caught between your need to protect him and your desire for him, two things that could _never_ be reconciled, God no, but it seemed would never completely let go of you either."

Dean rose from the bed in a quick movement, took a few steps away from Sam and then stopped with his back to him, not even knowing where to go.

"He'd become able to live with it a little easier than you," Sam said, and the turn his words were taking made Dean visibly cringe inward a little, crossing his arms. "Didn't like thinking about it much, knew nothing could come of it, but still...he knew what he wanted to do. Just sort of...got used to it."

Dean turned around and looked at him with what was probably the most forced-looking carelessness imaginable. "So what?" he said softly.

Sam shrugged as he got up and came a few steps toward him. _"So_ I just think it's kind of funny, how your adamant resistance never even really did much good at all. I mean...even now you must wonder about it. What it would have been like, in some impossible circumstances that could ever make it easy or okay." His eyes briefly danced up and down his figure for a moment before he went on, his voice getting low and quiet again. "If it would have been as good as that certain twinge and itch always told you it would be— _you_ know, the kind he could tell you were feeling whenever he would still sometimes catch you looking at him kind of uncomfortably, like he burned your eyes a little when he got too close or something...Because you still never have, never went as far as I'm sure you were inclined to with him, and apparently that's something that can keep two people hanging for _years_ with shit like that still unresolved."

With building anger, Dean shook his head and said all in a rough tremor of words, "You think you know anything about it just because of what's in your head? You _wouldn't_ know. You can't _understand_ what you're talking about."

Sam just smirked a little and kept talking, edging in closer to him so that Dean was forced back to gradually step away into the dresser behind him. "Not to mention how much your selfless and noble refusal to give in just kind of made him want you _more,"_ he said. "Made him want so badly to give you some relief from all that turmoil and let you know it's okay somehow."

Dean actually jumped in surprise just a little when Sam suddenly leaned in close to him, resting both his hands on the dresser behind him and enclosing him. "The fuck are you doing," he said in a quick and quiet growl, but why he didn't just _move,_ didn't try to say anything more, he didn't know.

"There's just no way to have that kind of conversation, right, but he'd still try to imagine how he could ever explain it," Sam said, leaning in toward his shoulder and practically talking right in his ear. "So many times he thought of just trying to tell you something like, oh, 'It's okay. Maybe it doesn't make any sense and I know what other people would think, but I _know_ it isn't like that. I know you could never hurt me or use me or make me do anything. It's _never_ been like that, you know you never even touched me before I started it...'"

And then Dean couldn't just stand there and listen any longer, because the way he said it with fake emotion, imitating the scared and desperate way _he_ would have said it, it wasn't totally convincing but close enough to be an unexpected punch to his gut to hear. Before he knew it he was shoving Sam away and then swinging at his face with a clenched fist.

It was like Sam expected it. He caught and blocked his strike, then just as soon had thrown his own punch. Dean groaned in pain as it caught him right in the jaw and sent him stumbling to one side, not quite falling over. He immediately stood back up straight and glared angrily at Sam again, his blood running hot. Sam had a slight smirk on his face, looking gratified, as if this was all a game to him. Dean imagined he'd been wanting a chance to get back at Dean for beating the crap out of him after that incident with Veritas. That was all this was to him. The thought just made him even more pissed and sent him moving to hit him again.

But he was emotional, angrily provoked, and naturally Sam was feeling nothing at all. He missed Dean's second punch as well and soon had taken control and had Dean's back shoved against the wall, his arm holding him down across his neck.

"Yeah, he never could have _really_ said that," he said, actually sounding almost a little excited now himself, "but he couldn't help but screw with himself sometimes by just _thinking._ And what would follow, maybe something like all the vivid dreams he had sometimes and felt bad about in the morning." He slid one hand down to his own cock, creasing his brow in an intentionally pained-looking expression as he cupped and rubbed himself through his pants to demonstrate as he added, "Or the things that would pop into his head when he was in the middle of jerking off, all sweaty and helpless and panting. Want to know, Dean?"

He lunged forcibly at Sam again, pushing him off of him, muttering, "You _son of a_ —" He heard something crash and break, a lamp one of them had just knocked over onto the floor. He still couldn't get a hit, but in their intense struggle across the room he ended up throwing him to the floor and pinning him down.

"Don't fucking talk about him like you know anything about it," he said in a threatening, low voice as he shoved his shoulders back on the floor. Words started spilling out of him uncontrollably, without him even knowing what he was saying anymore. "Maybe _you're_ nothing more than a sick fuck, but you got to remember more than that. I know it wasn't just about—wasn't _like that_ —"

"Wasn't like what?" Before Dean could notice how he so easily knocked him off balance with a shove upward with his knee, Sam pushed him off of him and rolled them over until he was kneeling over Dean instead with his arms pinned down in place. "Wasn't like he used to think about slamming you up against a wall and then sliding down to his knees and sucking you, nice and slow until your legs go weak and you're mindlessly whining and begging for it?"

Keeping his arms held down firmly, Sam leaned over close to him and started kissing and then sucking at his neck. It drew a quick hiss of breath out of Dean that could only be a reaction to the pain, and yet...

"Or I guess it wasn't like he wanted to throw you to the ground once kind of like this, and then do _this,_ that one night right after you'd just barely made it away from that haunted factory in Georgia both alive, and then without even undressing just get both of you off in his hand right then and there in the grass..."

Abruptly Dean managed to struggle free from him, but before he could completely sit up and push him away Sam just grabbed him at the shoulders and roughly pressed him down again, this time holding him in place with most of his body weight. As they were pressed much closer together then, Dean went a little still and swallowed, going loose all over with a sudden exhausted resignation; Sam moved on top of him, rubbing his hips along his just a little, and then without even having to look away from Dean's face he grinned wickedly with a short, deep laugh of self-satisfaction. Somehow in this time, without Dean knowing it while he was so obliviously enraged, they'd both gotten ridiculously hard.

Sam leaned down again immediately and started vigorously kissing him, all the while grinding their hips together repeatedly. And Dean didn't know or really care why, but he didn't stop him and kissed him back.

But it was terrible—kissing him, at least. The way Sam's mouth felt moving against his, the forceful but sort of empty energy of it, it was all wrong. It felt too demanding and too passive at the same time, so mechanical, while his real attention seemed to be on everything else their bodies were doing. It actually made him cringe inside and break away from him after a moment, pushing up against his chest and forcing him up roughly.

"Don't kiss me," he warned in a low, grating voice. Then as Sam watched in the following seconds that Dean proceeded to lift up his shirt and throw it off, he possibly looked even more thrilled than before.

Sam instead brought his warm open mouth back down to his neck, licking along his skin with the tip of his tongue and biting, as he started aggressively undoing the fly of Dean's jeans and then ripping them and his boxers down. Dean gasped lightly at the sudden sensation of the air on his skin when Sam pulled away from him just long enough to yank his jeans completely off. Then he just as quickly kneeled on all fours over him again and looked straight down at his face with an intense and almost unsettlingly steady gaze, and Dean's eyes instantly went wide when Sam then slid two fingers in his mouth, slicking them with spit. The sight made his lips part open with a breathless and silent gasp as Sam drew them in and out of his lips a couple times. Then he drew one of Dean's knees up and Dean automatically followed by bringing up the other leg around him too, swallowing in a kind of terrified and invigorated anticipation, before Sam reached down and slowly pressed his fingers into him.

 _"Mm—"_ Dean went rigid all over, his spine arching upward for a moment, and then made himself relax as much as he could and said in a barely comprehensible gasp, _"Ohfuck_..."

Sam had that vague smile again that made him want to throttle him, but then luckily he turned the attention of his mouth back to his neck, shoulders, and chest so that Dean didn't need to look at his face. Dean squirmed and gritted his teeth through the discomfort and pain and stabbing waves of arousal whenever Sam rubbed his fingers against the right spot, teasing him, working into him. With only his left hand to work with, Sam gradually got his own jeans pulled down to his knees and started stroking himself as he kept dragging his lips along Dean's skin all over. Dean turned his head to the side against the floor and dug his fingernails into the carpet through his building restrained moans and didn't think about anything.

Finally when he was in heavy and ragged breaths and Sam had started smoothing the whole length of his cock slick with precome, he couldn't take any more preamble, the laughable pretense that anything could possibly prepare him for this. He grabbed at Sam's hair and made him look up at him. "Gonna fucking _do it_ or not?" he growled, but before all the words were even out Sam was grabbing his hips to roughly turn him over and then lift him up on his knees.

Dean moaned miserably as Sam pushed into him— _What the hell are you doing what the HELL Dean_ —and he was already struggling to stay upright on all fours and not just collapse weakly as Sam started rocking him forward, splitting him open, making his vision go white with every thrust, _No wait wait yes fuck oh God—_

He found himself regretting that they were on this part of the floor because there was a full-length mirror over on the wall they were facing. When Dean caught a glance of it, he could see enough of the reflection of them to see what Sam looked like. He didn't have his eyes closed, they were just distant and unfocused, and his mouth was shut in a firm line that looked cruel somehow with the muscles in his jaw clenching every time he thrust into him. The image was so cold, so practically inhuman, that Dean had to look away. But he still kept seeing it the whole time, hearing the simple and primal noises of pleasure that came out of him after a while without shame or reserve.

When they were reaching the height of it Sam started moving faster and with a more purposeful force, both of them breathing in wild short heaves in a thick and filthy fog of mindless heat. Dean's cock was starting to ache and he lay his left forearm across the carpet to hold his weight while he reached to finally touch himself. But Sam immediately moved to push his hand away, reaching under him and taking him in his own firm grip. The aggressive contact was so unexpected it was almost unbearable, every strong and forceful stroke jerking his whole body hard like an electric shock and making him cry out uncontrollably on almost every beat of the rhythm dictated by Sam's hand.

It didn't take many to finish him off then, and through some of the last finishing tugs he groaned with his face sinking down toward the floor, "Mmph—Fff— _Fuck_ you—" He heard Sam briefly laughing in that awful smug way again, made worse with how it now came out a little breathlessly amidst his shameless enjoyment as he was now getting close. As soon as he'd made him come he brought his hand back to grip Dean's hip hard again and then quickly followed him with a few more thrusts.

The most insane thing about this was that the following moments as they got dressed again were not awkward. Awkward would have been great. But as far as Dean cared, Sam might as well not have been in the room, and what he thought right now was the least of things darkening his head.

Sam _wasn't_ in the room. That heavy truth was finally making itself at home in him, a suddenly fresh pain as if he'd never completely faced it until now. Only he was, settled somewhere deep in his chest where there was an unbearable tight ache, in a place that felt like it had just been torn at desperately by himself and left raw and open. Maybe he was here as long as Dean was, with this empty thing that looked like him, as long as Dean wasn't going to let him wander off and let himself stay so screwed up. He knew then that the only reason he hated him so much or felt any way about him at all was because he _was_ Sam, in some way, or at least there was no way he would ever be able to stop seeing him that way.

He was completely fucked.

"Don't worry," Sam said casually when he was about to leave, talking to his back as he sat on one of the beds. "I know this isn't going to happen again...I'll be back in the morning."

Dean was so terrified of sitting still after he left him alone in the silence that he went out for a drive, going nowhere in particular, just to keep moving. He made his way around the roads in a daze, almost going right through a red light at one point. When he got back to the motel and was getting out of the car, he noticed his cellphone tossed onto the passenger seat where he must have forgotten it the last time he went out, and he put it in his pocket. As he went back in the room, he was still weirdly desensitized and detached, not remembering or noticing where all the pieces of glass were still covering the floor where the lamp had shattered until he stepped over them and heard them cracking more under his boots. Only after getting inside and sitting down did he look at his phone to check it for any messages.

Lisa had called him back.

Staring at the name on the caller ID, Dean felt something horrible finally coming to the surface over the numbness he'd been drifting around in for an hour. He closed his hand around his phone in a tight fist and dropped his forehead against it, closing his eyes with a tight grimace and just trying to breathe through it while his throat started feeling tight.

He needed a shower. He dropped his phone down on the bed and blinked away the moisture brimming in his eyes as he went into the bathroom.

Strangely enough, by the time he got in bed that night he'd come to some kind of sense of peace about the whole thing. Maybe he'd thoroughly shot himself in the foot now as far as still having a home with Lisa was concerned—how the hell could he even look her in the eyes now?—but if he really thought about it, it was probably better that something had forced him to face the end of that now as opposed to after drawing things out longer with her and making them even worse. He'd _wanted_ to believe he could still make things right with her and Ben, but for a while now his hands had been tied too tight for him to be able to make any promises and it had all been completely indefinite. Dean was always more comfortable with a definite path, one he didn't find the need to question, and at least he wasn't torn between two things anymore. Right or wrong, he knew there was nothing else left for him but to stay with Sam and try to fix him.

As he lay in bed staring up at the ceiling in the dark, he tried to remember what it was really like to kiss Sam. It wasn't like there was any point in _not_ thinking about it anymore, and it was more like masochistic self-punishment than indulgence to imagine it now anyway. He tried to recall everything in that dark college dorm room in detail, to remember if it hadn't felt so mechanical and disconnected, if it had been warmer, slower maybe. But the memory had always been a bit of an incoherent haze, and after all the years he'd kept it shut tight in his head like it had never happened, it was so hard now to see it and feel it the way it had really been.

One thing he could remember well was the sight of Sam asleep in bed in the morning, the way he left him, looking whole and content. And he looked over at the empty bed next to him and it was enough to tighten the ache in his chest terribly. It was the first time he realized it and how ridiculous it was, but all this time just out of habit he'd kept getting rooms with two beds everywhere he and Sam stayed, even though he'd known for a while that he never slept.

He would keep doing it, too. That soulless image of his brother would keep walking around no matter how much he wished he could just rest and disappear and finally give him peace. That and an empty bed next to his was all he had left.


	4. 4/6

Two guys walk into a motel and somehow they always make a certain impression, one that can make others assume things. They're usually pretty embarrassed to be corrected, so sometimes it doesn't seem that worth it to bother saying, "Oh, we're just brothers." Sometimes that doesn't even seem to sit like a real and final explanation anyway, because they'll never be "just" anything and maybe that's the irregularity others see and read wrong. At least that's the most Dean has ever been able to understand it, by figuring there are just no simple and all-encompassing descriptions for what other people see when they look at them and that's all.

He knows it isn't like Lisa ever suspected anything about him and Sam. That wasn't what she meant the last time they spoke, when she described it a lot more harshly than he's used to hearing it even if he already knew it to be true. _"The most unhealthy, mixed-up thing,"_ like she understood enough to know she didn't want to entirely understand. She didn't have to suspect anything to see something there that's just too much, which you simply don't see between normal, mentally stable people who know how to sit still sometimes and read about politics or celebrity marriages without constantly anticipating the next sign of danger.

It doesn't bother him as much as it used to, or at least not in the same way. He still doesn't really understand the whole freak story that is him and his brother and could never explain it to anyone else, but somehow after everything he's seen now it's easier to accept that some things in this world are just fucked up and he's never going to completely get it.

Which may just mean in simpler terms that not much shocks him anymore. He and Sam have met archangels, have been taken back to a time before they we born, and have both crossed over and seen the other side multiple times, and now they'll never belong to this world the same way everyone else does. They know too much. Always strung neither here nor there, they tread some line between the mundane world of human life and the other in the shadowy periphery that most never have to even see. That's why there is no home for them anywhere, nothing constant and stable, except what they have in each other.

Even when he was happy with Lisa and enjoying not being on the outside like that, sometimes it didn't feel completely real, like he wasn't completely himself. At times the disguise covering him got too thick so he was only watching his safe and content life through a desensitizing veil, couldn't seem to scratch through and actually touch it. He thought that life would work because he could be honest with Lisa, and usually it did. But there were certain things too big and burdensome that he could never bring himself to tell her about, revelations like hot irons piercing the fragile human skull that would finally shatter her comfortable reality too much. She still doesn't know there's a prophetic text written about him and Sam, or that the mere months Dean spent in Hell makes him more than twice his physical age inside, or who his brother was sharing a cage with down there the whole time he was taking her son out for pizza every Saturday night with an empty smile.

Telling her everything might have meant she could be to him almost a sizable fraction of what Sam was to him, but somehow he knew he didn't want that for them, for her. It's better for a relationship to be defined by something other than shared horrors and burdens, but by now he isn't sure if that's even possible for him.

Even if he doesn't feel much shame anymore when he thinks of how he and Sam stand out and appear together, like they're inseverably chained together in their separate and deeply private world, now it just makes him sort of sad and regretful. Now the realization and reminder always weighs down on him like an affirmation of what they can't have that other people have. It's bad enough that something in them might never let them be satisfied with the lives of lawyers or mechanics now. It's possible they could still be happy with other people, but Dean knows what he has with Sam—has and yet _can't_ have with him—will always be there overthrowing everything else even though it can never, ever be the same as him and Lisa or Sam and Jess or even a couple weirdos like the Ironsons, and it isn't the least bit fair. No matter how they may let the laws and meanings be bent in their shared niche they live isolated in, they can't change what they can't change.

 

An ambulance passing by their motel wakes up Dean in the middle of the night and then he can't get right back to sleep. His eyes take in the faint pattern of the wallpaper in the dark room and then he has to squint a little when a car goes by in the parking lot outside their door, sending lines of light dancing across the walls and ceiling for an instant.

He is almost surprised by the sound of deep, slow breathing beside him, as if he had almost forgotten. He looks to the side at the other queen-size bed to the left of his which is not empty but holds Sam, sprawled sloppily across it with his back rising and falling slightly with each breath.

Dean's lips turn into a small smile before he closes his eyes again.

 

They've been back on the road for four days now, heading to South Carolina to look into a string of senseless murders that sound like they could be connected to a siren or something else in their area. For Sam the gradual slide back into routine is more than natural and welcome. It's sort of like finally coming home.

Because maybe hunting has finally become an irremovable part of his identity that he seems to need, but that isn't _all_ of it, he realizes now. While soulless he's still been used to doing jobs with the Campbells and then Dean, but that wasn't what makes the whole package, and it feels even better being back on the road with Dean than he thought it would because of how he can now appreciate the difference. For the first time since he fell into that hole, they're back to dropping all their stuff and racing each other to claim the shower as soon as they get into a motel room after a long day of driving. They're back to one of them occasionally having to wake the other up from a somewhat loud and animated nightmare and then offer him a drink and an ear when they both can't get back to sleep afterwards. They're back to bickering lightly whenever Sam corrects something Dean says like a total know-it-all before he can help himself. All this, not just the actual work they do together, is what really makes it the routine he'll always need to hang onto.

They grab a late dinner before checking into a motel for the night once they've reached their destination. After Sam uses the bathroom at the diner, he comes back to their table to see that Dean has grabbed a newspaper and is studying the page with the crossword puzzle with a pen in hand. He already has five or so answers filled in.

"What are you doing?" he asks with a slightly cocked eyebrow and an amused smile as he sits back down. "You hate crossword puzzles."

Dean just keeps looking over it closely and murmurs absently, "Yeah..."

As he picks at the remnants on his plate, Sam can't help but look over and read some of the descriptions upside-down. "Nine across is 'Maiwand.'"

"Shut up," Dean says right away, clearly not wanting help, but just as soon he asks, "Your _what?"_

"The Battle of _Maiwand._ M-A-I-"

"Oh, _that_ Maiwand." Dean fills in the word but keeps his look of light annoyance at him being a smartass.

Sam notices that his coffee cup is full and steaming. "Did you have her refill this?" he asks, immediately looking at his watch; on the rare nights that he can actually have realistic intentions of getting enough sleep, he's always been pretty adamant about cutting off his caffeine intake after 8:00.

"Yeah, I know it's like a quarter after, I asked her to give you decaf," Dean says.

He smiles in a small, slow way that makes Dean shrug and look back down from his face. Then something makes him give a quiet single laugh and shake his head in disbelief.

"What?" Dean asks, glancing back up for a second.

"Nothing, just...You know everything about me."

"Well, yeah."

"Seriously. _Everything._ Especially the _bad_ stuff."

Shrugging again, Dean says, "Pretty much."

"But you still care about me more than anything."

Dean's mouth pulls into a tiny smirk for a split second. "Pretty much."

"How is that even possible?"

Dean raises his brow thoughtfully as he meets his eyes for a moment. Then he looks down into his cup as he raises it to finish off his own coffee and just says, "Question could go both ways." And soon he's fixated on the crossword again.

Sam smiles once more, watching him work on it for a moment longer. After a while he looks off to his right, resting his chin in his hand, and mutters, "Number five down is probably 'clad'..."

He laughs when Dean kicks him under the table.

 

A couple weeks later it's a potential haunting in Michigan in an old house that's been turned into a music conservatory. This is a job Bobby gave them because they happened to be close to the area when he first heard about it from Rufus, and it should be a fairly easy investigation because they don't even need to lie about what they're there to do. The head of the conservatory is already convinced there's something beyond any conventional explanation going on in this house and actually sought out an expert until he somehow got Rufus's number.

The guy is a tall and wiry strings teacher named Mr. McKinnon. When they meet him at the house late at night after all the other staff have gone home, he's waiting outside for them in the cold, apparently not even willing to be in there alone. When they accompany him inside and start asking questions, Sam finds him a little more nervous and delicate-natured than he might have expected, considering how he took the initiative to find somebody who wouldn't think he's a nutcase when the two of them easily could have turned out to be the nutcases.

In fact, he keeps looking at him and Dean like he's not yet certain they aren't, or even that he himself isn't just losing his mind.

The house is just about as chilled inside as it feels outside tonight. Wrapped up in several layers and a scarf, Mr. McKinnon seems to only remember how cold it is in here when he notices both of them rubbing their freezing hands together after a while. He apologizes and explains that he recently turned off the heat since he noticed all the strange happenings are more active at night. He has everyone believing the heater needs to be fixed so his students will be compelled to reschedule any evening lessons and nobody has to be here late.

Finally Dean gets to the question that sheds a lot more light on the situation. "Does this house have any unusual history that you know of?" he asks.

Mr. McKinnon stays silent a second, looking disoriented, and says with some surprise, "Didn't Rufus Turner tell you?"

He and Dean look at each other briefly with confusion and then Sam says, "Tell us what? We kind of got the message through somebody else..."

He sighs. "I got his number from the woman who last owned this house. Apparently he got rid of something for her here eight years ago. She'd sold it for a price that was a little low, so after enough was enough I had to get in touch with her and ask if she ever saw anything strange here. I was trying to be vague and not sound like a total lunatic, but I didn't even have to say much before she warned me to be really careful, especially at night or when I'm alone, but to keep paying attention and try to gather as much information as possible from everyone who witnesses anything. She must have not been alone when I called because she wouldn't say that much, just gave me that man's number and said to tell him I needed a hunter, and that whatever was going on, he'd listen to me."

"But you don't even know what it was that Rufus hunted here before?" Dean asks, starting to sound frustrated.

"No, I don't know what's wrong with the place. I thought you were here to figure that out. You know, that lady's lucky nobody would believe any of this so no lawyer could get us back what we paid for the house. Any more of this and my hair's going to start going gray. Even if a few of the other teachers are just as freaked out as I am, it's not like we can afford to move now. You have any idea what the recession's doing to businesses like this? By the way, she told me that other hunter wouldn't expect any compensation. That's how I could be sure he's for real, she said. You know I can't _pay_ you, right?"

Both of them have had a hand raised trying to slow him down since a few sentences ago, and Dean finally says, "Hey, we're expert _criminals,_ man, so if that doesn't bother you we're happy to just take care of it. And I don't know why you got a deal on the house, but look, if Rufus didn't finish the job and leave the joint clean at the time then I doubt she would have kept living here for a few years afterwards. This has to be something new."

"You're telling me it's just a _coincidence_ that there's something here I keep hearing banging on piano keys, in rooms that it somehow locks people out of even though there are no _locks_ on the doors, and the woman who formerly owned it just happens to know people who can tell me what the hell it is? _If_ you can tell me."

"Actually, I think I just realized what it probably is," Sam says, turning to Dean.

Dean clearly hasn't caught on and is looking at him like he's thinking he must have skipped his coffee today. "Sorry, isn't this one kind of a no-brainer?" he asks, holding up his EMF detector that he's already given a wave around most of the first floor. "We haven't even checked out the rooms he says this ghost seems to mess around in the most, and the EMF's already been off the scale."

"I don't think it's just your regular spirit, though. Usually they want something, and this thing's been hanging around here for too long without getting to the point or even showing itself. Unless we call him up now we can't know exactly what Rufus snuffed here eight years ago, but you know certain things can leave behind sort of a bad aura, and that—"

"Can leave the place like a warm and cozy abandoned nest for a poltergeist to take possession of," Dean finishes, getting it now.

"A p—A _poltergeist,"_ Mr. McKinnon repeats slowly, looking plenty overwhelmed.

Dean grins and slaps a hand on his shoulder. "You don't have to be in here while we keep taking a look around to be sure, if you'd rather..."

"I'll be outside," he says without protest. He promptly turns to leave them with the house to themselves.

They start heading upstairs, and as soon as they hear him shut the front door behind him, Dean shakes his head a little. "Sheesh. What a marshmallow."

Sam shoves his elbow in his side lightly. "Hey, we don't really have the perspective to understand how freaky some mere banging around and meddled-with door locks can be," he says, and it just comes out sounding more mocking than he intended and makes Dean grin more.

"Yeah, if this thing _is_ a poltergeist, it definitely doesn't sound much like that nasty motherfucker that was in our old house."

"Well, I know I've heard they're not always that dangerous," he says after they make it to the second floor and slow their pace, Dean getting the EMF detector back out. "The really bad ones mostly hide themselves, but sometimes poltergeists seem to get some kind of fulfillment out of scaring people as opposed to hurting them and they're not much more than troublesome and annoying. They only get violent if they catch onto the fact that the inhabitants intend to leave the house forever and they're about to lose any subjects to screw with."

"Which of course always happens eventually," Dean says. "Unless it's a music school that's getting financially boned, apparently. Nobody actually has to _live_ here, so it's not quite too much for them to deal with. Perfect hangout."

It doesn't take long for them to conclude that the presence in this house is too strong to just be somebody's spirit and they must be on the right track. Ever since they learned the right purification drill for a situation like this from Missouri, they've always kept the Impala stocked with some charm bags for this kind of spell already prepared, so right away they're able to send Mr. McKinnon home and get to work.

They neglect to mention to him what they're going to have to do to some of the walls.

They split up to plant the bags and everything seems to go smoothly even after Sam has taken care of the east wall, except that it's so damn cold his hands are getting slightly numb and weak. To get his second bag in the south side of the house, he goes into a large storage closet so he can at least tear this hole in a part of the wall that's more hidden.

That's where he is when all the lights in the house flicker a second, then shut off.

Almost immediately he hears quick steps—Dean sounds close by, nearing the room he's in. "Sam! You good?"

"Yeah, in here," he calls, starting to work more urgently hacking away at the wall with his hammer. "I'm almost—"

First comes the crash of something falling to the floor out in the hall, followed by a shouted curse from Dean, and then the loud slam of the door swinging shut behind him.

He's trapped in the room. There isn't a sliver of light as before when there was some coming in from the streetlights outside the windows, now just complete blackness.

Doesn't matter. He has to keep working. He feels the wall to see where he's started making the hole and hits it a couple more times, feels it again to see if he can reach his hand through, now where did he put the pouch...

Before he can find it he's getting too distracted as the room that he can't even see very strangely seems to grow around him, a feeling of yawning and expanding emptiness. His hands start moving with a kind of hopeless weight, nothing to grab onto. Nothing but darkness, like he's nowhere. And it's so cold. He's closed in and trapped and he doesn't know why but he doesn't like it. In front of him, the wall, the hole he can feel...

In the tight and enclosed, freezing cold dark, it's here, in him and coming out. _The_ wall.

Some terrible sense of familiarity is crushing down on him, he doesn't like this at all but why, what is it, something edging closer and closer to his thoughts the longer he's in here.

No no no, he tells himself, _stop,_ you don't want to remember. As the hammer drops heavily from his hand, he sinks to his left against the wall, taking so much effort just to stay standing as he struggles to hold himself together.

He can't. He has to, where is the damn thing? What was he looking for? What's he supposed to be doing?

Sam can't think anymore as the pressure closes in, a spiked ring of burning red light around his vision of nothing but darkness. A sound like screaming, vibrating under the floor. Something in the corner of his eye that's pressing his skull in and picking away at him, itching itching, and he just has to stop pressing back and resisting and then all the tension stretching him thin will stop, he can feel it, if he just lets it open a little...

Suddenly there's a soft light to the side of him, just enough to fill the room with some color and depth again. The sound of Dean's voice is strong and near, almost bringing him right out of it.

"Sam!"

And then he's closer than it seems like he should be already, after he didn't even quite hear him approach. The light moves with him, his hand carrying a flickering flame from his lighter. He grabs Sam's shoulder that's turned to him and shoves it roughly against the wall, turning him so his whole back is pressed to it and he can look at him.

"Oh shit," Dean says breathlessly as he sees his face. "Sam? _Hey!"_

He hears him and he wants to answer but he can't seem to, like he's having a dream in which he can't scream. Then he briefly has an impression of Dean's breathing sounding tight and a little panicked as he comes close and then he kisses him, briefly but firmly. The completely unexpected contact is a centermost point of warmth that brings Sam right out of his head, shocking him completely back into awareness like a splash of water.

Still gripping his shoulder tight, Dean looks close at his face with some of the worry ebbing from his features as their eyes finally meet, waiting tensely for some confirmation that he's okay.

"I'm sorry," Sam says softly, shaking his head quickly.

"You with me here? Can you do this?"

Taking in a deep, collecting breath, he nods quickly. "Yeah."

He can now see a little light also spilling in from out in the hall. He can't believe he didn't even notice Dean kicking in the door.

"Come on, we need to hurry," Dean says. "It definitely knows what's up now..."

Sam remembers very easily now where he put the charm bag, reaching into his pocket to take it out as Dean rushes back to the door to keep it held open. After he drops it into the wall and they leave the room, he sees that the crash he heard before was a chandelier that's now a mess on the floor, and he wonders how narrowly Dean escaped from having that fall right on his head.

The spot where Dean started making the last hole in the wall before the power went out is one of the darkest parts of the house, so Sam stands by holding out his lighter and watching the surroundings for him while he keeps working. Before long the house fills with the angry-sounding pounding of piano keys from three different rooms and several stereos that have just turned on and started playing music at full volume. It's so loud that they don't hear the tiny rain of a few nails falling loose above them, the creaking and slow cracking of wood.

Not until there's a pause of silence in the piece that the CD player in this office is playing, and only in that instant Sam can catch through the racket the sound of the collective groaning and screeching of the ceiling buckling under great weight. He looks up above them as he realizes what's happening, his mouth dropping open.

"Dean," he says in a tight, barely controlled voice. "Hurry up." And at that very moment he sees the first crack start splitting the ceiling.

"Yeah, I got it," Dean says just as all at once the whole house goes silent again, reaching his hand back out of the wall.

Sam yanks him away by the arm so fast he gives a light yell of pain.

"Dude, it's _done,"_ Dean says as Sam pulls him to the other side of the room with him, but then he hears the bigger and louder following cracks and looks up in the same direction Sam is anxiously looking. "Wha... _Holy_ —!"

The first gap tears open, the bottom of a piano leg piercing through, and then the whole thing lop-sidedly follows falling through and taking chunks of the ceiling with it. Both of them shut their eyes with cringing grimaces as it lands with a whole-hearted crash and the terrible sound of notes ringing dully and discordantly.

"Oh fuck me," Dean says a little breathlessly, immediately turning to Sam. "Let's get outta here _now."_

He nods, not having to be told twice before following him quickly toward the door. Sure enough, a bunch more lights are starting to come on around the neighborhood. Luckily they've make it to the car and Dean already has the keys in the ignition before anyone appears outside trying to see what's going on.

As he speeds the car away they stay silent for a while, letting their heart rates return to normal. Then Dean looks over at him and says, "Thanks. That is _not_ how I'd want to die."

He cracks a slight smile. "Can you believe that just happened?"

"I know." Something gradually brings a calm smile to Dean's face and then he glances over at him again before speaking again. "I'd almost forgotten what it's like, you know..."

"What?"

"Being able to go into these things knowing you've got my back."

Sam lies all the way back in his seat, sighing a little. "After I almost screwed the whole thing up. If you hadn't been looking out for me, too, and you hadn't come after me right then..."

Dean's smile has fallen. "It was the wall bothering you, wasn't it?"

His first inclination is to avoid making him concerned and he has to force himself to answer. "Yeah."

"What happened?"

"I'm not sure. I think...I remembered something."

Dean's eyes open wide. "You _scratched_ it?"

"No. I think I got close, though. For a moment it's like I was really close to being reminded of something...You remember how we knew Lucifer had to be in Detroit because of the temperature difference there? How he said he burns cold?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I think it must have been really cold there. In the cage. Cold and dark. And when I got shut in that room, I guess something in me felt like I was reliving it and it was suddenly really hard to keep other details from breaking through." He looks out the side window dejectedly. "In the past few weeks it's been totally bearable, I've been able to all but forget about it...I couldn't help thinking I might be kind of out of the woods now."

Dean shrugs. "Hey, this isn't _that_ bad," he says. "I'm pretty damn relieved to know there was something specific that started it, at least. I thought it had just randomly hit you out of nowhere and that was really freaking me out. I mean, your face back there...For a few seconds it looked like you weren't even here."

They meet eyes grimly a moment and Sam says, "Sorry. I didn't mean to lose it like that, in the middle of..."

"Whatever, quit apologizing. I guess this means we just have to learn to avoid certain triggers or whatever, right? Keep you out of small, cold, and dark places."

Sam shrugs. "Yeah," he says with a sigh. "You're right, it could be worse."

"And hey, we just took care of that job in under two hours and it's not even that late yet," Dean says, gesturing toward the clock. "That might be a record. Instead of packing it in we might as well hit the bar or something."

"Sure, but it's got to be a bank run. I need to do some swindling at the pool tables or I'll be all out of cash soon."

"You mean 'cause Bobby won a fortune off you last week?" Dean says teasingly.

"That tricky son of a bitch," he says, rolling his eyes as he's reminded. "'Honor among thieves' my ass."

Dean breaks into some short laughter and reaches to turn on the radio.

"Evening, gentlemen."

 _"Son of a—!"_ Caught off guard by the smooth voice coming right from the back seat, Dean nearly loses control of the car for a second as they both jump in surprise and glance behind them.

Balthazar is lounging comfortably in the back, one leg over the other and his arms stretched out across the back of the seat.

"Kinda busy right now, Balthazar," Dean says with an agitated glare at his reflection in the rear-view mirror, not really trying to sound convincing about the lie. "If you don't mind."

"I do, in fact."

"Also, we don't care."

"Unless _you_ care to hand over some of the holy weapons you've got stashed," Sam says.

At those words, Balthazar just gives a soft laugh. "Come on, boys, this is just a little chat," he says, and just like that the car starts to slow.

"Hey!" Dean says angrily as he steps on the gas in vain, clearly unable to stop whatever Balthazar is doing to control the car.

As soon as the Impala has pulled over to the side of the road by a park and come to a complete stop, Sam quickly grabs the keys from the ignition and gets out.

"Castiel, if you're not busy..." he mutters under his breath as he rushes over to the trunk, Dean now following him. All they have in their arsenal to use against an angel is holy oil, of course, which isn't of much use without some prior preparation for trapping or attack, but they don't know how bad this could get and may have to try _something_...

Balthazar appears sitting on top of the trunk before they reach it and sends the keys flying out of Sam's hand to land far out of sight in the grass.

"Dammit, we don't have any business with you anymore!" Dean says.

"I beg to differ."

"Your help didn't work out for me," Sam tells him, "and it wasn't needed anyway. I've got my soul again. _I_ didn't agree to any deal with you."

"It's not my problem you were only— _hmm_ —screwing around at first, shall we say, and didn't get the job done in time," Balthazar says, smiling at some hidden joke in his choice of words which obviously goes right over Dean's head but makes Sam grimace. "And I'm afraid there's no one else to take responsibility for that soulless little shit's actions but you. You took up my time, now you owe me some of yours."

"What do you _want?"_

"Information, for a start. Rumor has it Death is the one who broke you out, and somehow I doubt he'd care to be so helpful unless there's something in it for him. I want to know what's so important to him about the two of you. What is it you're onto right now?"

"Who says he _does_ care?" Dean says. "Maybe I just convinced him he owed us one. Sam was only stuck down there because of what we did to get the horsemen free from Lucifer."

 _"Right,_ we both know things are never that easy. Especially for you two."

As far as they know there's no particular reason they should be worried about giving away the truth about this, and for the most part Dean obviously just wants to be annoying. Sam can't help but grin to himself a little when he answers with a shrug, "I don't know, the guy did bring me a bacon dog last time I saw him, and he didn't have to do _that._ If I didn't know any better I'd think Death is just starting to sort of like us. Good situation, right?" He throws Sam a cocky smile. "What was it you were saying a while ago about the irony of that?—Whatever, point is," he goes on quickly, looking back at Balthazar, "darkness as it turns out can offer more protection than light, when you gotta keep hiding and running. No, nothing _is_ that easy, and if you knew what I had to pull to get the old geezer's attention this time you may not call it that. But it does actually make a lot of _sense_ in a way, am I right?"

Balthazar's impatience finally erupts. _"Enough_ already!" he says. "What has he told you?"

"What do you want, our leads?" Sam says, cluelessly throwing his arms up. "We have no leads! We're not even sure what we're looking for yet, he just wanted us to keep looking."

To his surprise, Balthazar seems to accept that more easily now that he and Dean have given up the attempts at defiance and evasion, for he immediately mulls over that information with a sigh. "I thought as much," he says, crossing his arms with a frown of disappointment. "I'll just have to keep looking myself. Surely _I_ can uncover something like this before the two of you do, no matter what the reason for this misplaced confidence he has in your particular abilities."

"It's not a damn _race,"_ Sam says in annoyed disbelief. "Are you even worried about the fact that _Death_ is concerned about whatever's going on right now? Or is everything just a business opportunity for you?"

"Of course that's what this is! Everything seems to be connected to whatever the Alphas are hiding right now. Do you have any idea what some would trade for that kind of information? The location of _Purgatory?"_ He looks back and forth between their faces and then just shrugs at their less than awed reactions. "Anyway, whatever else it is they're being very secretive about is of little importance to me. All I want is an opportunity to...well... _talk_ with one of them. So as soon as your work involves catching an Alpha or at least sniffing out one's hideout, I'd like you to hand it over to me. Then I'll gladly consider us even."

"No way," Sam replies immediately. "Our job's protecting people, we _kill_ monsters before they can hurt anyone else. We don't do _that._ And I don't think I like the idea of what you'd probably do with any information you could get out of one."

Balthazar slides down from the car to stand and is abruptly right in Sam's face, his hands clasped behind his back unassumingly but the look in his eyes suddenly a little threatening. "Ah, I see, you have principles," he says. "So you can be in this world but not of it? A hunter's code? That's just ever so _endearing._ I'd think after spending so much time in Hell because of your noble self-sacrifice you'd have a better understanding of what having principles gets you."

Rolling his eyes, Dean says, "You done?"

"In just a minute. Look, I really don't think I'm asking for much here..." Balthazar raises his hand in a lazy motion and at that moment Sam gives a low yell, feeling a sudden stabbing pain bloom in his gut. Before he knows what's happening there's just dark asphalt in his face as it's knocked him right off his feet.

"Sam!" he hears Dean say sharply, rushing over to him as a vague motion of feet in his momentarily blurring vision. In weak and heaving breaths, he clutches his throbbing stomach and tastes blood in his mouth. It feels like he was just hit in the center with a sledgehammer from both in front of and behind him.

Dean has barely just made it to his side, leaning over and clutching his shoulder, when their attention is abruptly stolen by a loud groan of pain from Balthazar. They look back over to see him also collapsing to the ground and cringing in intense pain. Both of them can only freeze and stare at him with large, shocked eyes as Balthazar leans over with another heavy groan and then spits some blood onto the ground. He wipes at his mouth with one hand and then looks down at the blood smearing his palm with just as much disbelief as they're in.

What the _hell?_

Then Balthazar's face quickly registers understanding, followed by greatly vexing frustration. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," he says in a low voice, rising to stand back up with what looks like taxing effort. "You're _marked?"_

As Balthazar just glares at him like somebody might look at a disgusting insect that just bit them, Sam forces himself back up onto his feet as well with some help from Dean.

"Ugh, _Castiel,"_ Balthazar says with a shake of his head, grinding the name out with a weary-sounding kind of annoyance. "Only that tight-arsed stiff would think of something so charmingly passé."

And it sinks in then: Balthazar can't hurt him. He'll be stupid to try again, with _him._ But...

Sam looks to the side at Dean with horror just as Balthazar's eyes settle on him as well.

"Yes, I'm afraid it's going to have to be you, then," he says to Dean lightly, his voice still coming out not quite as strong and level as usual as he stays slightly hunched over in pain. "I'll have you know I really didn't _want_ to have to resort to this sort of thing, but I suppose I don't blame you two for not taking me all that seriously yet."

"We're not going to work for you!" Sam says, getting enraged. "You're not getting _anything,_ because I never want to see your face again! Everybody thinks they can just have a piece of us now if they find something to hold over our heads? We're _done_ with that."

"This from the one who's only walking the earth on Death's terms. I have nothing _against_ humans, you know, but you could really use a break from your profession to regain some perspective of what measly, insignificant vermin you are next to all the other things whose affairs you meddle in, with absolutely everything to lose. Mark or no mark, like it or not, you're _mine._ You'll just have to allow me a moment to demonstrate that to you by rearranging your brother's insides before you start seeing it, unless of course you think you're starting to see it just now?"

"Oh, for Christ sakes," Dean says before Sam can answer, "just _shut up_ and get on with it."

In a brief mess of a moment, Balthazar comes toward Dean, starting to make some other motion with his hand; Sam quickly moves to do he-doesn't-even-know-what to try to stop him; and then someone appears right behind Balthazar in the blink of an eye and grabs him—someone they'd instantly recognize anywhere, of course. Sam and Dean go still at Castiel's appearance and watch as he hauls Balthazar away from Dean and strikes him—or maybe actually throws him, it happens so fast it's hard to see—with incredible force that sends him flying in the other direction and actually lifting just slightly off the ground. For a split-second the fast blur of movement that is Balthazar falling past the Impala looks like it's going to graze the end of the bumper but then barely misses it. Instead he topples into a public mailbox right at the side of the road that gets not so much dented as pretty much flattened by the strength of the impact as it's knocked over.

Dean turns to Castiel with a stunned yet also annoyed expression. "Watch the _car,_ dude!"

"Ah, Cas," Balthazar says before getting up with a groan. "I was starting to get insulted that you hadn't been bothered to drop in yet, or worried you were dead—It was one of the two, I'm sure."

Castiel moves ridiculously fast to stand right in front of him, in that way angels do without appearing to move at all. Balthazar touches his stomach again with a cringe, the attack clearly having made his injury hurt more. 

"It's not very nice, is it?" Castiel says. "That's what it feels like to be human, if you ever wondered."

Balthazar rolls his eyes. "Really, though. A mark of blessing, Castiel, are you _serious?_ What eon are we in?"

Dean is now helping Sam walk over toward the Impala where they can see them closer and Sam can lean against something besides him. Castiel looks to the side at them as they stop and watches Sam weakly sag against the side of the car, still clutching his stomach in a mirror of Balthazar's state. "Sam, are you alright?"

He gives him a bitter smile and rasps, "I'll live."

Castiel fixes a firm and grave gaze back on Balthazar, who just shrugs at him as if he feels Castiel can't take a joke.

"What?" he says innocently. "I was going to make him better as soon as he decided to cooperate, I swear."

"The blessing?" Castiel says, back on the former subject. "Whatever you want to think, it _worked,_ didn't it? Doesn't that make you think that just maybe there's still someone at the top with something to say about whether we're still meant to serve and protect them? They're not ours to just use as we please."

Balthazar just grins like he can't believe what he's hearing. "You see, your problem is that you actually believe they are significantly different from us in any way besides being weaker," he says. "I'm living proof, aren't I, that we can be whatever they are if it appeals to us, and be better at it. Every bit as sinful and greedy and lustful, with really quite fine taste in the best kinds of indulgences this universe has to offer. We just don't all choose that. So I just have to wonder, what is it that makes humans so special anyway? I'm supposed to feel guilty for buying souls off of them in fair and honest trades?"

"Fair and honest?" Cas echoes doubtfully. "That child you gave part of the staff to probably only thought you were trustworthy because you told him you were an angel."

"Well, I _am_ an angel. I can't help it if the word has misleading implications of me giving a damn. Though I'm sure what you had to put him through to get my name out of him cleared up any misunderstandings he had about how easily he should trust one of us—Well done there."

The more he hears, the more troubled Castiel looks, almost pained. "How can you do all this?" he says. "How can you just not care?"

"Come on, brother, just _look_ at the state of things now. Our Father's gone and you've personally invalidated every word of prophecy we still had left to go on, and now what's left? Just an abandoned human world of human souls doing the same nonsense they always do. _Human nature_ is the only long-surviving thing there is left to rely on. Do you realize what that actually means, Castiel? That the only thing you can depend on is that you can't depend on anyone. In the end, everyone's capable of just going rotten, just like them. Human beings _are_ the authority now and that's precisely why all of creation's going down the drain. I'd be insane _not_ to do whatever ruthless and self-interested things are necessary to cover my own back."

Castiel is shaking his head slowly, looking at him in utter disbelief. "You were once an honorable soldier with brothers and sisters proud to fight beside you," he says. "And now you've just given up and left all that behind to spend your time buying, partying, consuming, and copulating—some of which, by the way, you can't even do without experiencing those things through a human vessel, no matter what you're so proud to believe about our capability to surpass them in anything. To think in all this time you've been in exile you've taken absolutely nothing from humanity but meaningless hedonism. Don't you see at all how _sad_ you are?"

Balthazar lets out a mocking laugh. "And you're suggesting there's something more to learn from humans? Like _these_ two?" He gestures toward Sam and Dean briefly. "A couple vile and depraved brothers who are fucking each other? Please."

It can practically be felt in the air, how completely stiff both of them go at hearing it from him, as Balthazar goes right back to not regarding them at all as if he didn't just spill something monumental to one of them. Turning his face down to avoid even the smallest sight of Dean out of the corner of his eye, Sam breathes out in a heavy, beaten exhale—Well, there it is, done.

Castiel's reaction, however, is rather mild. For a moment his eyebrows draw together as if with confusion as he looks at Balthazar with his head tilting slightly, almost like he has to think first before understanding what exactly he's referring to. "As a matter of fact, they're not," he says simply, with the kind of calm displeasure with which someone might argue against a shallow interpretation of a text. "Last I knew, at least...It's very complex, actually. That you would sum it up it in such simple and crude terms makes me inclined to think it's your mind that is so depraved."

Balthazar laughs lightly with a smile that is half affectionate and half bitter. "Well, _you_ would already know that."

"This is what's so wrong with you," Cas says. "This lifestyle of careless decadence you've become comfortable with—You think _that_ is the nature of the human soul? The only ultimate truth left? Their kind do not all fail and become controlled by temptation. _Far_ from all, in fact. They don't just take whatever they want and act on any desire they happen to have without thinking about the consequences." 

For a brief moment, Sam thinks he sees his eyes darting meaningfully over toward him and Dean.

"It's been a very long time since they've had any direct guidance from God," he goes on. "A great deal of them don't even have any faith anymore. Yet even in his absence they've somehow managed to keep order and keep taking care of one another as much as before, still more or less staying to the rules. They haven't dissolved into the kind of chaos and endless violence that our world in Heaven is in now. Whatever deeply flawed, despicable, disgusting creatures you may see in the two of them, I'll easily take them over the brothers who are _killing_ each other. Is that so unbelievably foolish of me?"

Starting to look somewhat weary, maybe even a little regretful, Balthazar sighs. "You're going to get yourself _killed,_ Castiel," he says.

"You're not doing much to prevent that by hoarding several of the weapons I could use."

"Oh, come on, _even_ if you have a few of the weapons. I made a point of stealing the least powerful ones which Raphael's followers won't be searching the hardest for, and they're just enough for my own protection only because I'm not quite the high-priority target you are. Even if I didn't care to have them for myself, giving them to _you_ would just be like helping some miserable bastard looking to blow his brains out any moment by telling him where the bullets are hidden."

"I'm not going to _stop,_ Balthazar."

"Well, I won't be the one to help you fail. Let me have at least that much of a sense of accountability left in me. I'm sorry, I truly am, but it's _all_ madness up there as far as I see it. I won't have any part of it."

Castiel's expression becomes sort of hardened and numb. He looks over at Sam and Dean again for a second and then tells him with some finality, "I'm aware Sam made a commitment to you, but you know what it means now that I've blessed him. Not only that any kind of harm you cause him will be brought back down on you, but any debt to you he had is cleared."

Crossing his arms with a trace of annoyance back in his expression, Balthazar asks, "Did you do that just to protect him from me?"

"No. They both have me for that, evidently."

He rolls his eyes. "Fine, I get the point. I'll leave your _pets_ alone now. But Sam..." He looks over at him off-handedly. "Even a soul as damaged as yours is still worth something, probably more to me than to you. Do feel free to summon me if you ever change your mind once more and want to be rid of the thing again..."

Still shrunk in against the car in pain, Sam barely looks at him and groans out, "Go screw yourself."

He turns back away from him with a shrug, and Castiel just looks at him with a frown and says half-heartedly, "What he said."

And a moment later it's just the three of them.

 

After Castiel heals whatever kind of internal injury Balthazar left him with, Sam goes off into the grass with a flashlight to find where the car keys ended up. Dean stays at the car and starts re-organizing everything inside the trunk that got a little disheveled earlier when they dug around for the needed supplies to exorcise the house. Castiel's eyes follow Sam thoughtfully for a while as he stands leaning back against the trunk beside him.

"Cas, how'd you show up just at the right moment anyway?" Dean asks him, looking up for a second.

"I was just answering Sam," he says, looking vaguely surprised by the question. "He didn't say much, but it sounded urgent and I came as quickly as I could."

"Oh, I didn't even hear him slipping out a prayer."

"You didn't even know he'd already tried and _you_ didn't pray for my help?"

Dean goes still a few seconds as he thinks about it. Then he gives him a sort of sheepish look and has to lower his eyes again before saying his next words. "It's funny, I...It just didn't occur to me somehow. Most of the time I guess I figure you're probably too busy up there."

He can feel Castiel's gaze fixed searchingly on him. "Is something wrong?"

It takes Dean a moment to realize that he's basically trying to ask if _he_ did something wrong. "No, man," he says. "It's just...Honestly, I've been kind of dreading the next time we'd meet. Not just because it's freaking awkward after...well...what's changed, but because I wasn't sure _how much_ I might have to find shit has changed. You know, I wasn't sure if it could be the same now that you've seen everything in Sam's life, which has a _lot_ of me in it too, including...well." He swallows and his voice drops a bit lower. "Everything."

Castiel gives a curt nod as he understands. Not looking directly at Dean, he just says, "I figured we're not supposed to talk about it."

His breath falls out a little with relief in a way that sounds like the most fake laugh, and he grins. "Good. That's...Yeah."

Castiel looks over at Sam's figure in the distance again in thought. "I was wrong to advise against trying to bring him back," he says.

Dean looks up at him in some surprise. "It was a long shot and we got lucky, I know that," he says, closing the trunk and turning around. "Death gave us a better deal than we thought would be possible and it's already turned out _way_ better than it could have."

"I wouldn't say it's all owed to luck," Castiel admits. "Or my blessing...I think I've spent too much time away from the world of humanity, you see. That was why I couldn't see the possibility of it being worth it to just try. I'd forgotten that just as your kind have great weaknesses, they have their own strengths as well. I'd forgotten all the times you or your brother has surprised me after I expected you to fail, in no small part because of the strength you seem to draw from each other. You wouldn't give up on him, and you shouldn't have."

Dean is now also looking over at Sam, mostly visible to him as just a dark shape and the moving beam of the flashlight. He smirks a little. "You can tell exactly where those keys are, can't you?" he asks.

Castiel's lips tighten in the most subtle smile. "Don't worry, he's getting warmer."

He chuckles briefly.

"Thought I'd let him avoid me," Castiel adds. "I think he's just expecting some awkward moments as much as you've been...And I have a feeling you two may have something to talk about now, so..."

As he moves from his relaxed position against the car and stands up straight, Dean says, "Hey, I'm sure he doesn't necessarily _want_ you gone without another word."

"Dean. I really don't think he wants me around long after what just happened."

He stares in a bewildered silence for a moment. "Did I miss something?"

Castiel sighs, putting a hand lightly on his shoulder. _"Goodnight,_ Dean."

"Oh, that's cute. 'Goodnight.' You're all proficient in human-speak now that you've downloaded the Sam Winchester Encyclopedia of TMI."

"Don't get annoyed just because I know something about Sam that you don't. Well, I know a _lot_ that you don't, of course, but..."

Dean is frowning now as he actually thinks about it. "Is this about what Balthazar said?"

Looking at him grimly, he sighs. "You _don't_ know, do you?"

The light from Sam's flashlight switches off and Dean looks over to see him on his way back over to the car. Naturally by the time he looks back away, Castiel has made his exit.

Sam stops a few feet away from him and tosses him his keys, then buries his hands down in the pockets of his jacket and keeps standing there idly, not really looking directly at anything. Something heavy in the air seems to slow everything down, making them reluctant to move right away or even speak even though there are all kinds of things that could be said right now.

Dean gives the keys a toss in his hand, resolving to just get out of here first. "Let's go," he says.

It's been a really long night.

 

They're left in a tired but somewhat expectant silence that stretches on through most of the drive and then after they've found the nearest motel, checked in, and brought their stuff inside. Dean busies his hands by cleaning the outside of his gun, which he's been meaning to do ever since one night during their last hunt when they thought they were about to get arrested and he had to quickly stash it behind something on the muddy ground. Sam sits on his bed fooling with his phone for a while, probably going through and deleting a bunch of messages, and then Dean hears him put it down with a quiet sigh like he can't even quite keep his mind on the task.

"So you aren't even going to ask me?" he says.

Back turned to him as he stands at the dresser, Dean says, "Ask what?"

Sam's voice breaks just a little with discomfort through the answer. "How Balthazar knows what happened."

He stops what he's doing for a moment, slowing to stone. Right. Of course he _knew_ it was that...

He doesn't turn around but looks over his shoulder at Sam, staying silent. After a while Sam drops his eyes down and starts to look deeply troubled.

"Can you just tell me why?" he asks. There is something dimly pained in his eyes and his soft voice, something they've both been carrying around too long now while pretending it's okay, and it makes Dean look away again. "Why'd you _let_ him...?"

Dean's teeth clench together and he goes still, keeping his back to him. Then he just keeps wiping his gun, but it's an absent and pointless motion, brushing lightly over the same place again and again like his hand has disconnected from his brain. Then when it comes out it's a black mess spilling from a ripped-open seam all at once, said like a filthy oath.

"Because I wanted to," he says forcefully, dropping his hands down. And the reason it sounds so horrible is because it means _"I didn't care anymore."_

With difficult effort, he forces himself to look over at Sam, who has his head leaned back against the headboard of the bed and is looking up toward the ceiling with sunken eyes. "You hated it," he says, in almost just a whisper.

Dean turns all the way around, crossing his arms and drawing them in very close to him. "Yeah." He lets out a long, sighing breath. "I hated... _him._ That was why...Because everyone kept telling me this determination to get your soul back up here was crazy, and why the hell would I want to do that, like it was selfish and pathetic and I should just move on. And it's not like I didn't hear them. It's not like I wasn't worrying about whether it was right, when _you_ made me promise not to do exactly this.

"But it was practically impossible to just accept all over again that you were gone when you were _right there._ Not a finished product, nothing close to the real thing, but there was no denying he was still a lot more than some fake or copy. I knew I couldn't help but keep seeing him as my brother, that maybe that was starting to hold me back from seeing things clearly. So...I just gave in and played his game. Stopped trying to mold him into something more like you and just acted like him instead, because he was right, having a soul...It's shit." Dean stops a second, closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose with another heavy, silent sigh. The rest of his words start coming out less easily. "No consequences, right? It was something...It was what I'd always told myself I'd never do, so I guess I wanted to think it would mean I could stop thinking of him as...But I know all I was really doing was giving up. He caught me when I was weak, I just wanted to be allowed to _give up_ and actually let go, just for _once_...He knew that. Bastard wanted to convince me he was right and it was hopeless to keep caring, keep trying..."

"Dean." Sam's voice, steady and calm, breaks through his words that have started desperately running away from him.

"I'm sorry..."

"Don't. It's okay."

He shakes his head in frustration. _"No._ I'm sorry this is so fucked. You _remember_ all that and I..."

"I don't care that I remember it."

"Oh, like _hell—"_

"I can _get over_ that. That isn't the worst of it. God, you don't..." Sam has to stop for a couple seconds to collect himself, as if he's thinking of something so terrible it's difficult to even talk about it. His next words come out shaking a little with dark meaning, with something that sounds almost like anger. "Letting him get to you like that, letting your guard down...You were playing with fire. He could have done anything to you...So don't tell me it's shit having a soul, even if you don't totally mean it."

Dean shakes his head dejectedly, coming forward to sit down on the other bed. Now directly across from Sam but avoiding his eyes a little, he starts having some trouble speaking, his throat tight and his thoughts a mostly inarticulate mess. "Would it...would it mean anything if I tell you, if I _swear_ that...I didn't like it. No matter what he said, it wasn't what I wanted. Not like _that_..."

Sam's eyes get bright with slight shock as he hears this and he starts quickly shaking his head. Again he says to stop him, _"Dean..."_

"It was _nothing,_ it just made me feel so much worse...Because you can be such a little bastard and I've seen the very worst of you but I care about _all_ of you anyway, even if the worst is all that's available and the other parts are stuck in Hell, and I knew after that I still couldn't let go..." He draws in a quick, shallow breath. "Maybe he thought there wasn't much more to it than just relieving some fucking tension or whatever. But that _wasn't_ what I really wanted, Sam. Wasn't even close to enough. I needed you back." He rubs his fingers over his closed eyes for a moment, as if such simple words take so much out of him. "I just...Fuck. I needed you _back."_

Sam sighs quickly in exasperation, now with a look of disbelief. "That you would be worried about what _I_ think when I was the total creep in the room..."

"But you have to know it's not like—I _missed_ you, okay, and it was starting to get really hard again, and I wasn't even thinking about _that._ Well, _especially_ not then. It was something about your tattoo, that's all I was thinking about, you know, when he saw me looking at him and—"

"I _understand,_ you don't have to say this. I remember everything you tried to tell him, okay?"

"Well, I'm telling _you_ now. He was full of it. He knew everything, but he didn't get it. Even _I_ still don't get it, so how could he? All I know is I'd sooner throw myself in front of a goddamn bus than do anything to hurt you, no matter _what_ I might want, except something is always making me do it all the damn time. If I could imagine then that you'd be back now and you'd have to end up knowing everything, like waking up after I freakin' jumped you while you were in no condition to be able to make any kind of a good judgment call...But it's no excuse that I didn't expect this. And I was the only one in that room who had no excuse. I _had_ my soul..." He lifts his face up to look straight at Sam wearily. "Yeah. So tell me how that's okay."

"I'm not saying it was pretty, Dean, or that it hasn't been getting to me at all," Sam says, shaking his head again. "But you know, you're hardly the only person I now vividly remember having a meaningless quickie with whether I like it or not because I wasn't actually there to say yes or no. Sure, this was still really different, but you've got to try to see that of _all_ the things that happened or almost happened because I was so out of control, I'm far from the most disturbed by the fact that we..." His voice trails off as he brings a hand up to cover his mouth for a second in a nervous motion, then drops his hand back down heavily. "You didn't even think about it. You don't even know why..."

Dean tilts his head slightly with some confusion when he can't seem to say it, looking at him closely. "What?"

Sam sighs. "I really didn't want to tell you this...but I knew it would probably have to come up somehow..."

Dean has forgotten by now that this whole conversation started with Sam seeming to need to get something off his chest. Something regarding his dealings with Balthazar during that time. Somehow the idea is now giving him a bad feeling more than before. "Sam. What are you talking about?"

He taps a foot softly on the floor for a restless moment before starting to force it out. "It happened right after he left you and came back, right? It was like he didn't care to have anything to do with you anymore, and then just like that he changed his mind again. You didn't think that was strange at all?"

"Sure, a little," he says with a shrug. "But _everything_ about him was strange, wasn't it?"

Sam bites his lip a little, hesitating. "As soon as he made up his mind about not wanting his soul back, he didn't waste any time. He'd already summoned Balthazar the first time when you saw him again..."

"Wait, the first time? He had to ask for his help more than once?"

He hesitates so long that Dean finally has a chance to start getting it, his mouth dropping open. In his head he hears again with a turn of his stomach what Castiel told him and Bobby weeks ago, the other ways it's possible to scar one's own body for the spell Sam was trying to do...

"Because that was his first attempt," Dean says in a dead low mutter, understanding now. When the uncomfortable look on Sam's face confirms it, he shakes his head. "Jesus...No wonder he was suddenly so..."

Aggressive. Relentless. Manipulative, even, in a way that really should have sent up a flag in his head. It makes him feel incredibly stupid now, thinking back on the change.

"But I don't get it," he goes on. "If Balthazar told him...I mean, wasn't it supposed to work?"

"Balthazar wasn't clear enough," Sam explains. He shifts nervously, hands moving around his lap, before saying the next part with an edge of dark humor in his tone. "He probably didn't think he'd _have_ to point out the distinction. He told him several things that would work to scar himself, but he didn't specify that _that_ would only be enough if it wasn't...consensual."

Dean slowly realizes why talking about this is clearly filling Sam with such contained horror. He meets eyes with him, his expression frozen into a distant shock. "It wasn't enough," he finally manages to say.

Sam looks down at the carpet and gives a quick, jerking shake of his head, something wild creeping into his eyes. "It could have been. If he'd known...He took care of that requirement sort of as insurance, in case you ever actually got close to finding a way to recover my soul and he had to be able to get the spell done. And when he summoned Balthazar again later to ask what the next step was, he was so pissed when Balthazar could tell right away that he hadn't pulled it off. It was so frustrating that he'd come so close to fixing everything already but messed up on one detail. It was just a _detail_ to him, Dean."

"So what?"

" _'So what'?_ So he _would have!_ He only bothered convincing you because he did generally mean what he said about why he was staying around, and it's not like he really had it in him to particularly _enjoy_ hurting anybody. The way he was thinking...he figured killing somebody and feeling nothing about it would be different, but for this to do the trick he probably needed to...you know, _really_ get his rocks off like a sick bastard. He didn't even consider that it was about hurting you, not just that you and I are...But if he'd known, and it was still the most convenient option at the time, he wouldn't have hesitated for a second."

"Shit," Dean mutters into his hands as he rubs his face. No matter how irrational it may be for Sam to feel guilty over this, this has to have been doing a hell of a number on his head and he knows there's not really much helping that no matter what he tries to tell him. "I am so sorry...You've just got to understand even if that _had_ happened, it wouldn't have been you."

_"Dean—"_

"No, listen. The part of you that was completely in control that whole time, _he_ was just feeling threatened and acting out in the way that made sense to him. But even that completely ruthless asshole didn't _want_ to have to do any of it. It's not like you have any kind of secret desire to kill Bobby or hurt me that your soul has to prevent you from acting on. So all the worst things you're living with from that time aren't even really the worst things in a way. They had to be _provoked_ in a desperate situation and they don't have anything to do with who you are. Do you think _I_ couldn't have gone that far with my soul missing, or anybody else?"

Sam smiles mildly. "Yeah...I know," he says. "I've had a while to think about it now and...I understand that. But there are other things he did or said that...Well, they definitely _were_ me. That's still all he was. And even now a part of me's a little afraid you'll hate me for saying this, but I can't seem to actually regret everything he said. You may want to think he was just _wrong_ because of the way he made it all sound, but all those things..." He hesitates a moment, drawing in a quick and tense breath. "They were all true. But I can't imagine that I ever would have been able to say all of that so easily myself, _ever._ Maybe he couldn't completely _understand_ it, but...without him, neither could I now."

Dean looks up and meets his eyes steadily and calmly. Unable to quite find any words to answer that, he just nods.

"I'm just trying to tell you, Dean...it could have been so much worse. Whenever I think about it, it feels like all my worst fears being proven right somehow. I can't even describe how fucked up...I mean, it was using you cruelly and he _really_ enjoyed it anyway, and that's still what I remember of it the most. Liking it." Some tension seems to leave his features then, like he's just messily gotten out the last of the hardest things to say. "But however we might look at it, apparently it wasn't too much for my soul to handle."

He sighs heavily, leaning over with his elbows on his knees, and murmurs, "Yeah, thank God..."

With a distinct change in his tone, Sam asks, "Dean...?"

He looks directly at Sam's face again, finding his expression unsure and hesitant. "What?"

Sam shakes his head like he's changing his mind. "Uh. I don't want to push it..."

"What?" he says again.

"It's just..." Biting his lip for a second, he meets his gaze. "You didn't want him to kiss you."

He grimaces slightly, nervously shifting position a little. He's sort of surprised Sam would even need to ask about it. "Yeah, well...Wasn't right somehow. The rest of it felt close enough to something I wanted for me to fool myself, but with _that,_ I don't know. It was like cheating on somebody, or something...I guess I didn't want to ruin that one thing."

"Nothing's _ruined."_

He can't seem to look at his face anymore. "Yeah, I know, but..."

"Dean." It comes out very softly, and suddenly Sam is coming close to him, standing to cross the very tight distance between the two beds and then leaning over him. When Sam touches his neck and kisses him gently, he responds without even thinking, reaching out and pulling lightly at his shirt at his chest. Then as soon as he breaks away an instant later, his forehead leaning in against Dean's, both of them breathe out audibly in the following moment of trying to get a grip back on themselves.

"Christ," Dean whispers, not even knowing what's happening and how this started. Then Sam is moving down into a kneel and his lips brush down, kiss his neck, and it's the vague shape of his name in a faint gasp more than an actual utterance, _"Sam_..."

Now on the floor between his legs, Sam leans his head down close to his chest so they aren't meeting eyes anymore, and Dean lets his hand rest just lightly on his shoulder. As Sam speaks, he keeps his left hand on the bed beside Dean, but the other has found itself on his hip, one thumb thoughtlessly brushing back and forth along the skin right underneath his shirt.

"Maybe it wouldn't mean we'd automatically get struck down by lightning, you know?" Sam murmurs. "It just doesn't bother me like it used to. Hasn't for a long time. I try to remember why we can't and the reasons just sound in my head like somebody else's words that hardly apply. I think maybe...it would be okay...It could _feel_ okay..."

His head is now right against his chest and Dean can feel every word as warm breath through his shirt. He closes his eyes and rubs his hand along his shoulder a little as Sam drags his left hand closer and touches his leg. Sam seems to use conscious effort to just keep his hand still there on his thigh, waiting.

"Just...Can I touch you?" Sam finally says almost in a whisper, every word terrified and cautious like he's trying to speak close to a candle flame without blowing it out.

If he didn't ask, Dean probably wouldn't lift a finger. Without Sam waiting and making sure because he's _Sam,_ he wouldn't even think and he would just let him. The position they're in right now isn't doing much to help him think and God, he _wants_ to. He wants to let Sam slide that right hand up completely under his clothes and then lift his shirt off of him, kiss him wherever again, and again, open up his fly and lean down and wrap his mouth around his cock with his eyes closing in some unfathomable way Dean has never seen them closed.

But in this moment he can't help but see it and almost nothing else in his mind. He sees them as others see them, two strange guys walking into a motel or into a diner or onto a crime scene, and it's just that it would be nice for once to be able to think that some stranger assumes they're together not because of something so peculiar and intense shared between them that's easy to perceive, but simply because of how happy they seem together, in some whole and life-affirming way. And Dean just isn't sure he can see it ever being like that for them. In no world can he seem to imagine it ever getting that simple, just more tangled-up and complicated until he's smothering Sam's blood circulation and hurting him just by breathing and moving because they've become too tightly wound together as some unnatural whole of two halves, beautiful and grotesque all at once.

What he wants right at this moment is simple, but the rest of it they have no instincts for. It'll never be all about what they do in bed, it can't just be contained like that, would be a mess probably, and no matter what it's the worst idea ever for him to make a decision about this just as Sam is kneeling on the floor between his legs.

His hesitation must be pretty perceptible now that he's gone totally silent and still a moment; Sam pulls back a little and looks up at his face, seeming prepared for it. What he sees in Dean's eyes seems to say a lot before he even speaks again, as right away Sam draws back slightly and starts to look a little sorry.

Dean lowers his hand from his shoulder and covers it over Sam's hand on his leg to gently pull it away, murmuring, "I'm sorry..."

Sam stands up and steps a small distance back, giving a tiny shake of his head. "No, I shouldn't have..."

Now also standing up and walking toward the other end of the room, Dean says, "Whatever, shouldn't have stopped and _asked_ if you were just gonna beat yourself up over it anyway."

"I didn't mean for that to come out of nowhere and get so far. That—"

"It's fine. I just..." He turns to face him again, lets out a deep sigh that holds all the tiredness of more time than he can even measure with any certainty. "I need some air."

Sam turns his face down slightly and sits down on his bed. "Okay."

He goes around the room to grab his room key and his jacket. When he's about to go, Sam is leaning over staring into space and deep in himself. Stopping at the door, he tells him, "I'm just going for a walk. To think."

Sam looks up at him with a reserved expression. "I know."

"I'm not just gonna disappear to a bar for the rest of the night or something and then pretend nothing happened tomorrow."

He nods and says again, "I know."

"I've been kind of a dick about this before, okay? It didn't help things any, I know that."

Sam gives a short, dark laugh of surprise at the vague apology. "Dean...do you really think we were _ready_ to deal with this at all before now?"

He smirks dryly. "No, I guess not."

There's nothing else to say for now, so he turns and finally leaves. As he walks aimlessly down the block with his hands in his pockets, the crisp night air doesn't hold quite the feeling of clarity he might have expected. He's removed from Sam's warm proximity and released from the pulling, twining, tangled vines of want that were just wound so tight in that moment they didn't mean to happen, but the world still isn't really any simpler out here than it is back in that room.

He wishes he knew what he's looking for, what he's waiting for, but maybe this is just the same dead end it's always been. After he sits down on a bench somewhere a couple blocks down from the motel, the time steadily slips away from him and the night just gets colder.


End file.
